Stop harming your credit rating with credit card applications!

October 9, 2007

Credit cards are readily available almost everywhere you look these days. You see offers on the television, offers in magazines and even offers through your front door. So the temptation to actually sign up and apply for these credit cards can be quite strong. However, before you rush out and apply for every single credit card offer that you see, there is something that you really need to know – it could affect your credit rating!

So many people just rush out and apply for credit card after credit card without even knowing if they are likely to get accepted. They do not look at the criteria needed to obtain the cards and often that can lead to them getting turned down for one of more of the cards that they have applied to.

Now you may just think “never mind” and you could choose to just carry on looking and applying for a different card. However if you do that, there is a good chance that it will affect your credit rating and that in turn will affect how likely it is that you will be accepted by any future lenders. So just why do credit card applications affect your credit rating?

The main reason applications can affect your credit rating, is because when you are turned down, to another lender that could mean anything. It could be that the lender that you applied to thought you was unreliable. It could be for any reason whatsoever but to a future lender they do not know the reason you were turned down and so they automatically assume that you are unreliable. So it is vital that you only apply for credit cards when you know that you have a good chance of being accepted.

Overall credit card applications can and do affect your credit rating. You may not get a mark against your name for some applications, but for others you will. So it is always better not to take that gamble and to be a little bit more careful when you do look for your next card.