I'm thinking of applying for a couple of new cards here in about 3 weeks. I'm paying down all the balances on most of my cards except for 2. I threw huge chunks of money at some cards but the statements cut on some of em with a couple of new purchases on em so they aren't quite $0. The 2 cards I'm not really touching are cards that are BT's I did about 7 months ago and so they have 0 APR's on em for another year or so. One of em has about $7000/10000 on it, and the other is about $1700/2500. My other cards are basically like $500/56000.
I read that your overall UT should be low, seems as though under 10% or lower is ideal. And to have 0 balances on as many cards as possible. But what if you have say $100 on one card, maybe $50 on another etc.? And I'm referring to cards with limits in excess of $3000.00.
Is it as irrelevant as I'm thinking, or does it really matter?
I ask because I really don't want to wait another month or so to get my 3-4 cards with such low balances on em, down to $0. 
Thanks.
Hello
Thanks for the reply. My scores are all around 760 with nothing negative other than a couple of 30 day lates on my mortgage from about 6 years ago or so.
Income is $85,000 and inqueries are around 5-9 in the last 2 years depending on the bureau. 3-4 of which were from mortgage refi shopping about 1.5 years ago.
I have a Discover More card which I love that I've had for about 5 years that has a $11,800 limit on it, and I'm appyling for the It card here in a few weeks as I'm hoping for another good BT card to use for my remaining cc debt. I hope I can get around 10k for a starting CLI with that.
I'm thinking of for the hell of it going for the Chase Freedom and maybe a US Bank card sine I don't have one of theirs.
Nearly everything looks good besides the high utilization. If you're looking for higher SL's . There are other companies that might be more giving on that area. BBVA Amex or NASA.
Do you have any Chase cards? US bank is known to be conservative ..though ymmv.
Do you have any Chase cards? US bank is known to be conservative ..though ymmv.
FWIW, I wouldn't worry about how many cards report a balance while apping. I'd be more concerned with the utilization of each card and overall utilization.
I do have a Chase Slate that I got about 3 years ago but they've been incredibly stingy to me. I think it's always been at $3500 since day one. I did do a BT on that when I got it for a couple of grand and paid it off within a year or so. Did another grand or 2 of purchases total on a regular basis. Never an auto CLI ior have I asked for one, and anytime I look online for a BT offer the last 1.5 years or so, they're never there for me 
Discover's always been great to me in the 5 or so years I've had their More card. Started out at around 5k. They gave me an auto 3k or so and also I asked for a couple more CLI's to get me where I'm at now of $11,800. I've given them a ton of my business cuz they always have 0% APR BT's and they're always good to me. I think I should easily be able to get an It! card and if it had at least a 5k to 10k CL, I could just swap my balances around to get em paid off quicker.
Well I am at a 65k limit for all my cards, and I do have $7700 on a Barclays card that has a $10,000 limit.
And a B of A card with $1700 on it and a $2500 limit.
I just haven't paid those off because I wanted to pay down my other cards and those 2 cards have almost another year of 0% APR BT's on em.
My other cards are at like $400/53000.
Could those other 2 cards really hurt me from my goals right now? I was hoping if anything any potential suitors would just assume that I'd be getting their card so that I could do BT's onto the new cards.
You really don't want to get too carried away on the balance transfers. I'm no expert, you may very well be fine depending on what banks or CUs you decide to go for.
Chase was stingy with my slate as well. It was stuck at $1500 for 7 years! I rolled the limit into a Freedom and closed the card.
If you plan to app Chase. Try to grab to cards from them that may benefit you on the one HP.
NASA offers BTs with Apr set for the entire life of the loan.
Chase was stingy with my slate as well. It was stuck at $1500 for 7 years! I rolled the limit into a Freedom and closed the card.
If you plan to app Chase. Try to grab to cards from them that may benefit you on the one HP.
NASA offers BTs with Apr set for the entire life of the loan.
If I'm not mistaken, the last set of checks NASA sent me. It was 3% with no transfer fee.
@boober wrote:Well I am at a 65k limit for all my cards, and I do have $7700 on a Barclays card that has a $10,000 limit.
And a B of A card with $1700 on it and a $2500 limit.
I just haven't paid those off because I wanted to pay down my other cards and those 2 cards have almost another year of 0% APR BT's on em.
My other cards are at like $400/53000.
Could those other 2 cards really hurt me from my goals right now? I was hoping if anything any potential suitors would just assume that I'd be getting their card so that I could do BT's onto the new cards.
That's a fair amount of credit, and you have good scores.
What is your full list of cards you have now?
Which cards are you considering apping, and what are your objectives with getting those cards?
Do all cards need to be apped in one go, or you can pace them out over a series of months to cover spend bonus requirements?
FWIW, I have gotten 11 new regular CC paced since early December 2014 through now. With open balances of $45k starting, and recently working down to $26k. All of those apps were with banks I already had some history with, including PenFed which came after a year with their secured card.