Credit limit utilisation

[Nick_M]

Is there an “optimum” credit card utilisation percentage?

I have quite a few different cards and want to tidy these up a bit…(since Amex stopped allowing regular re-applications I don’t think I have closed any, with the exception of Creation who made that decision for me!). I have some 0% deals in the background as well as using a couple for my day-to-day spending.

I currently use approx 25% of my limits – how high can I let this get without it having too much of an impact if a good intro bonus came along?

[Andrew.]

There isn’t a correct answer.

That 25% utilisation looks great, until the algorithm identifies that your overall utilisation never gets below 25% and you’ve got a hard core of borrowing over 14 months that has become a burden for you.