Credit Card Stoozing - what is your limit

Caz_Puddle

I have managed to get £50,000 on Credit Cards with 0% interest which works nicely with my offset mortgage. How much are other Money Savers getting hold of ? Credit Limits seem to be coming down - is this a ploy to stop us stoozers, I'll bet limits go up as soon as the 0% period ends.

MrChips

I was about to ask a similar question. From reading the posts in here, I am feeling a little envious when people refer to £10k + credit limits cos the standard I seem to get is £5k if I am lucky, and more recently £3k is the norm.

In total my stooz pot consists of the following (in order of application):
Egg = 5,500
Capital one = 10,500
M&S = 3,000
Mint = 3,400

About 22,000 safely in my A&L online saver, soon to be transfered somewhere paying more than 5%.

In addition I also have Amex (5,400 limit), A&L (5,000) and Lombard Direct (2,000) for purchases (i.e. cashback, mastercard backup cashback, and foreign transactions) all applied for before I started stoozing except the Amex which I applied for at the same time as my Egg card above.

My salary is about £40,000. It's possible I have been a little bit greedy and applied for too many cards too quickly (the egg card I applied for in late Feb 2005, and the others roughly one a month since then) but could there be another reason why I don't seem to be offered really high limits? Is my salary too low in comparison to the credit limits I already have access to? Is the fact that I rent accommodation rather than own a factor? Do I already own too many cards? I recently got turned down by Nationwide I think because I already have "too much credit" but I know they are one of the more "responsible lenders"!

I recently ordered my credit report from Experian and there was nothing (in my opinion!) dodgy there. All credit paid back on time. No outstanding debts other than what is on the maxed out stooz cards above.

Maybe I am just being too greedy and I am being treated fairly. However if anyone knows some good tricks to help me boost the stooz pot in future that would be nice. Does simply asking for a credit limit raise usually result in success?

Caz_Puddle

I got decent limits £15K max, to start with and since then they have been coming down to similar numbers that you quote. I'm sure its a way the CC companies lure in new customers & deter the stoozers.

Al_Mac

Mine have always been 4 - 6k, Mrs Mac seems to get 5 - 9k, works part time and earns less, go figure. total 0% over the past 2.5 years about 150K. Never thought about trying to go extreme, just kept the mortgage offset.:beer:

Reaper

56k, although sadly almost half of that is about to come to an end now First Direct don't do 0% deals any more. Unless I can come up with an alternative - HSBC perhaps?

Still, it's been good while it lasted and very useful combined with an offset mortgage.

YorkshireBoy

£53K personally, but £73K joint - and we only started in April. Obtained 8 cards in 9 weeks between us - a good start. Last month's interest was £156. With 2 more SBT's gone through this week, June should be a good month but, looking forward, July's interest will be over £230. Keeping it going should net us around £2.5K/annum.

My "currently no-fee" card list (thanks in part to https://www.stoozing.com) still has 11 more for us to attack between us. However, with the limits we've had so far, even opening the list up to include those that charge a fee, a £50 (max) fee shouldn't have too much impact on a 9 month (or longer?) stooze.

Clariman

For 3 or 4 months at the end of 2004 I had £85K in my Stooz Pot but it is now down at my norm of about £50K. The 85K was unsustainable and came about through a couple of pieces of good luck - Halifax upgraded my old cashback to a 9 month 0% without a credit check and MBNA extended my 12 month 0% deal by another 6 months. Those 2 things gave me scope to take on a couple of more credit checks and cards temporarily.

We have a ""Share your stoozing stories" discussion board on the stoozing website if anyone is interested in reading other stories or sharing your own.

http://www.stoozing.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=ststor

Clariman

Clariman

simonleblank

15k egg
15k Nat West
8 k M&S
7 K M.Stan
9.5k Abbey

54.5k TOTAL

All @ 0%
And never been refused

---

yet!

Smudge32

Never thought about this before.

I'm about £4000 in debt and paying it off about £100 p/m. Could I get a c/c with 0% interest for say 9 months and then pay off a bit of mortgage with it?

Sorry, I'm just being a bit thick here!

teksat2k

Smudge32.
Yep. using credit card money to temporarily overpay mortgage is something that many people are doing - as long as you have funds to pay off credit card at end of 0% (offset or a flexible mortgage that allows you to take money back out). This is better than stoozing in savings account as you don't get paid interest, therefore don't pay tax on interest.

PS Current stooz pot £57k - missed out on a £25k card with First Direct

smartsaver

Smudge32 wrote:

Never thought about this before.

I'm about £4000 in debt and paying it off about £100 p/m. Could I get a c/c with 0% interest for say 9 months and then pay off a bit of mortgage with it?

Sorry, I'm just being a bit thick here!

Not a good idea, in fact a very very bad idea to pay off a mortgage with a short term 0% card .

Your best bet is to clear your 4k debt before anything else. People talking about mortgages have 'offset' mortgages where a savings account runs along side a mortgage. You gain no interest on the savings but also pay no interest on the mortgage. The money is gained by stoozing - see https://www.stoozing.com.

Back to the original topic..

Me and Mr Smartsaver
EGG 15k & 1.5k
IF 15k & 3.9
MBNA 18.5k & 3k
Tescos 2k
LLoydstsb 15k & 15k
Barclaycard 1.3k
ABBEY 5k
HSBC 2k
Cap 1 4k
Morgan Stanley 2k

Having paid minimum payments we currently have 92k jointly stoozed making our mortgage interest free :j

Long may it last :beer: