Credit Card Advice - To Close / Reduce Limit or not.

ObviousAlt9945

Hi,

I have a rather specific situation I’m looking for advice on - 

I have a very good credit rating (well, the made up score is really good anyway), but i have a high income, a small balance on a buy to let mortgage and no other debt. I also have 3 credit cards:

2 with high limits (>15k - don’t want to be too specific)
1 with a moderate limit (>5k - again trying to be vague)

Both of the high limit cards i have had for > 6 years now (one for nearly 12 years) - rewards cards - and I used them for my company travel - paid it off fully each month but given the amount of travel i did pre COVID the balances were useful so I didn’t exceed 50% on each card.

The moderate limit card is < 2 years old and is another reward card but for my household spending - again paid off in full each month.

I got lifetime status with a hotel chain recently so this makes the benefits of one of the rewards card a lot less useful, now its only really bonus points on spend) I’ll still use it periodically to pay just for hotel stays at that chain to get the bonus points.

the other high limit card recently removed the only benefit i used so its completely useless to me now. If i kept it I will probably put ~100 per month on amazon purchases on it so it wont be completely dead - balance to be cleared each month in full.

Ideally i want to apply for something like a BA Amex card to get the avios rewards (and more importantly the 2 for 1 voucher) and I’m likely to put all or most of my travel spending in the future (post COVID) on this card (so i would like to have a chance for a decent limit on this card).

With this in mind what would be best for me to do:

• Close the high limit card that gives me no benefit any more. This would reduce the average age of my accounts so I’m worried it might impact me.
• Ask them to reduce the limit of the current high limit card that gives me no benefit (will this impact me / be considered adverse)
• Do nothing, just apply for the new card
• Something else I’m not seeing.

Thanks in advance


Please forgive the throw away account - but I’m paranoid about giving out too much info that can be tied to a name.

jay1804

AmEx are known to give higher limits. Option 3 seems the best.

You might want to look at the AmEx gold you can get 20,000 Avois (MR points can be converted to Avois), then apply for the BA card later.

Also if you get a referral link you can get 32,000 MR/Avios.