Credit Card Shuffle Discussion area

Been offered balance transfer rate of 0% till August 2011 or 1.9% till December 2011.

Looking to transfer £10000.

The balanced would not of been paid off in August, however finding another deal with any 3% fees in August is not guaranteed.

What are your thoughts.

Regards
Matty007

I've got an Amazon mastercard with two different rates being charged. the debts are as shown below.

Is it correct that any payments to the amazon card will pay off the 16.9 debt first - so does that make the tesco card the most expensive at the moment. (until there is only £980 left on amazon).



Tesco
17.472
3891


Amazon
16.9
3521


Amazon
20.9
980




Trying to work out my shuffle plan and it looks like my overdraft is more expensive at 19.3% in any case so will start throwing money at that first.

thank you.

Not sure if any one has mentioned this idea or come up with it yet on here, but since the rules on credit cards interest repayment order were changed, I have been using a new method to save interest that i worked out but never heard mentioned before.

It may sound strange but I save money despite the fact I am doing all my purchase spending on a typical APR rate credit card and NOT paying it off in full every month!

This works because I have a lot of cash debt at a higher rate then the purchase debt. All the spending I do on the credit card is money i am not spending on my debit card. Assuming i don't spend more than i would on my debit card beyond my disposable income, that frees up the amount i'm not spending on the debit card as a greater available balance. I then, use the amount i didn't spend on the debit card to pay off the amount i did spend on the credit card, which pays of the high interest, hence saving me money!

It just seems to simple, to me anyway, even though it may sound complicated! Once the cash debt is paid off however, it is no longer beneficial.

ee_walk wrote: »

Hi everyone

A bit of a newbie query from me - I'm trying to get my head round the mechanics of shuffling balances between cards. Here's my current profile:

Card Balance Limit APR Offer
Egg £3000 £9000 18% 3.9% pa until Dec 11, 3% fee
Virgin £3000 £10100 18% 0.9% pa until Jun 12, 3% fee
Cahoot £3000 £7000 13% none

What's the best plan of attack? Is it to transfer the £3k off of Virgin to say Cahoot, then transfer all the balances back on to Virgin to take advantage of the 0.9%? What about timing? How long do I wait before transferring the balances back on to Virgin? Or is there a better way altogether?

Thanks in advance.

Try and get another 0% card to transfer the debt to ideally if you can pay within a year or 18 months, but presuming you are unable to do that and presuming that the 18% is what you are paying now on your egg and virgin cards, and that the offer rates are what you will get I would say the following....

Yes you are right, transfer it off virgin, but to egg 1st i would say (unless the cahoot transfer rate is less than 3%). Wait for it to completely clear 1st though. At least a week i'd say before doing it back again to be safe. Then, you should simply get virgin to transfer all the debt from both your egg and cahoot cards to your virgin card. Assuming the special rate doesn't apply to a one off single transfer. It should all fit.

After the offer ends in June 2012, assuming you have the same cards at the same rates with the same balances by then, it's probably worth ringing both of your other card companies up and asking them for a low balance transfer offer and then just transfer as much as you can to the one with the best offer. Try to keep the overall % of credit available that you're using low, (i've heard below 1/3 of the total of all your credit available is best as a rough guide). Keeping this rate low will probably make you more likely to be accepted for a good offer with another company in my experience.