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Scott,
How often can you apply for credit
cards? Does it look bad on your credit report if you apply for many
credit cards? My husband and I have 5 credit cards. Our credit
rating is good, so most of our interest on our cards are between 5
and 7%. We owe $19,000 and I am currently emptying one of our cards
so that we can transfer the entire $19,000 using their 2.99%
life-of-the balance rate.
Thanks to your many tips in your
newsletter!
Maria
Maria,
Thanks for writing and thanks for
reading DebtSmart!
 You
can apply for credit cards as much as you like! It's true that there
can be a short-term negative impact on your score but it's quite
negligible.
I have 80+ credit cards and my FICO
score is 804 and I apply for new credit at least a few times each
year. If having too many credit cards, and applying for new credit,
can hurt your score, then I don't see any proof of that in my
records.
Getting new lines of credit may
actually help your credit score.
How you ask?
By increasing your credit lines, you
decrease the ratio of debt to available credit. Imagine that you're
maxed out at $5,000 in debt on one credit card. You have 100% of
your credit line used. If you get another, new, $5,000 line of
credit, you now have $10,000 of total credit and you're only using
50%. So, in this case, your debt ratio was cut in half!
Keep up the great work transferring your balances to lower rates. That's the way to save
money on your debt. Use the banks against each other. Competition!
That's how it should be!
Cheers,
Scott
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