Utilisation Ratio

sultanoflondon

bit of an update — I have a large-ish balance expiring in July, and so I applied for a BT card to put it on to today. To my surprise, I was offered only a Vanquis card with a tiny limit, and nothing else. This is after being offered cards from Virgin & Santander in December (which I took), and having longstanding Lloyds, NatWest, and Chase cards separately too. Why do we think my card offers have become so poor?

This is slightly concerning me, given how many cards I need to refinance this year.

born_again

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81878089#Comment_81878089

A guess is that your debt to income is so bad, the risk of a possible default is too great.

hugheskevi

I applied for a BT card to put it on to today. To my surprise, I was offered only a Vanquis card with a tiny limit, and nothing else. This is after being offered cards from Virgin & Santander in December (which I took), and having longstanding Lloyds, NatWest, and Chase cards separately too. Why do we think my card offers have become so poor?

It is not in the slightest bit surprising to only be offered cards from providers catering to poor credit given you very recently applied for and took 2 new credit cards. That is 2 hard searches and a lot of extra available credit. With at least 5 existing mainstream credit cards you have a lot of available credit, and probably quite a high balance/income ratio if you are using all of them.

I find it best to try to leave fallow periods after a round of applications to allow for time for records to update and settle after opening and closing credit cards. Then after several months make simultaneous applications for all the cards I want in the next round, then leave a fallow period, and repeat.

In the most recent round, I found it a challenge to get a lot of good offers. The Natwest group was the only one being particularly generous, and I even had to take a TSB card to mule balances from Natwest Group and then back again to new cards from them. It will be several months before I will be accepted for the top offers again after all of that.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81878089#Comment_81878089

You've posted this on the stoozing board, which is basically all about people choosing to use 0% credit cards in order to earn more on their capital elsewhere, so in the event of not being able to obtain decent 0% offers, they just pay the debt off and move on.

Is that what you're doing, or do you not have the funds to repay your card debts? If the latter, then that's not stoozing and is risky if 0% deals dry up and you'd struggle to service debts when interest-bearing…

Jami74

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81878089#Comment_81878089

If it's not due until July, don't make any new applications until June. And maybe pay a bit down between now and then.

sultanoflondon

Thanks all. Responding to each:

My DTI is under 20% for unsecured lending (ie excluding my mortgage).

I did apply to two cards in December, because I got a good Money Transfer offer from Lloyds & transferred it immediately to a Santander card, and got a new Virgin Money Transfer card too. I took both, which increased my aggregate outstanding credit card balances by about £20k in one month.

Re stoozing, yes I have enough assets to repay the debt, it’s just that I’d like to keep the party going & not do that… 😆

Re June, I’m happy to do that, but I wish to avoid reaching June & having no ability to refinance, and then having to pay it all off, and therefore cannibalising my large balance (which has taken me about 18 months to accumulate).

anyway, sounds as though consensus is that this isn’t a problem to be addressed, and that I should wait for a few months without applying for anything new, and then transfer the balance in June/July time. Do correct me if I’m wrong.

born_again

Give you now have a mortgage.

Pay the debt off with the savings & then concentrate on overpaying the mortgage which will in the long term be more efficient, than any stoozing.

Jami74

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81880252#Comment_81880252

Doesn't that depend on the interest rate of the mortgage and the interest rate of the debts though?

I'm also stoozing. The interest I earn from stoozing each month overpays my mortgage.

I'm not great with numbers and would need to see some worked examples to properly understand why one would be better than the other.