What makes more cash - 0% purchase or cashback?

Jane.tweedynn

I did the calculations about a year or so ago on 1% cashback and the answer was that you are much better off using the 0% card up to the last two months of the 0% offer at which time you are then better off switching back to the cashback card.

Unbelievable_2

Stoozing (currently totalling £85K)

Going completely off thread here - and being very nosey - I know you're one of the founding whatchammies of Stoozing and all, but I was wondering if the huge stooze amount is all yours, or behind every good Clariman is there a good Clariwoman with her own set of contributory credit limits? ???

Please feel free to tell me to mind my own!! :-*

zcaprd7

Can't you balance transfer some credit card cash at 0% into your savings account (via EGG).

Then use a cash back card for spending which is repayed in full each month from your savings account...

Reestit_Mutton

I haven't had a chance to go through all the threads on this board yet but I wonder if anyone has thought of this...

If your monthly card spend is likely to be around £250, simply open a Halifax monthly saver at 7% and pay into that every month instead of paying off your card.

If your monthly spend is likely to be around £500, simply open an Abbey Monthly saver at 7% and pay into that every month instead of paying off your card.

If your monthly spend is likely to be around £750, open both Halifax & Abbey monthly savers and pay into both of these instead of paying off the card.

When the accounts mature in a year, just use the balances to pay off the card.

Of course, make sure you open the monthly savers first such that their maturity comes before the card starts to charge interest.

on a £250/month spend, the saving is £105 before tax
on a £500/month spend, the saving is £210 before tax
on a £750/month spend, the saving is £315 before tax

this is both a cunning money saving scheme AND a sensible budgeting mechanism which ensures that you don't build up a balance that can't be paid off in 12 months time (surely something that Sainsburys is hoping will happen in a number of cases).

HtH
Reestit Mutton

Smitty

Why not combine the 2 schemes?

Buy on the best cashback card, upto 2% on Amex, BT it to Egg, then SBT it into a regular saver

Brighty

But you can only bt with egg in your anniversary month. Plus any bt you do reduces the amount you can stooz.

What i mean is i have a 15k limit on egg, i intend to sbt the lot next month on my anniversary, i have also just applied for a mint card and have been given 4.3k limit which i also intend to sbt. I did aply for an amex blue to use instead of my debit card for all purchases, building up some nice cashback. After reading this i have realised i'd be better off with the sainsbury's card. Instead of paying off the amex each month, i will pay the same amount into my savings account building up far more in interest than the amex cashback would be.

Or am i missing something?

Clariman

Going completely off thread here - and being very nosey - I know you're one of the founding whatchammies of Stoozing and all, but I was wondering if the huge stooze amount is all yours, or behind every good Clariman is there a good Clariwoman with her own set of contributory credit limits? ???

Please feel free to tell me to mind my own!!

My Stooz Pot of £85K is way more than I had ever intended to get and only got there by a bit of luck .... and a good salary. I had been maintaining my Stooz Pot at about £45K to £50K and was careful about how many credit searches I had done on my file.

However, I then got the opportunity to upgrade my Halifax cashback card to a Halifax ONE card which gave me 9 months of 0% without a credit search. I also got MBNA to extend my 12 months 0% deal by a further 9 months (!) ... again without a credit search. So I found myself in the situation where my limits were still quite high and I felt that I had a couple of searches 'in the bank' so to speak, so I sent in a couple more applications which were also successful.

So I will be at 85K until the end of the year when I have to pay two of them off, taking me back down to the 50K mark. I suspect that I will be strongly tempted to put in another application at that time. We'll see.

So, in answer to your question, I don't Stooze with Mrs Clariman's credit cards. She won't let me. Although she did seem to be softening up a bit last time we talked about it ! :-)

You mentioned that I was a "founding" person of stoozing.com. That makes it all sound a bit grander than it really is. I wrote most of the Motley Fool FAQ on Making Money from Credit Cards and the bit on using it against an offset mortgage was written by Stooz (on TMF). Stooz bought the rights to the domain name https://www.stoozing.com for a bit of a laugh really and put the FAQ content on it.

Clariman

johnllew

behind every good Clariman is there a good Clariwoman with her own set of contributory credit limits? ???

Providing your partner is amenable and has a decent income, it's very advantageous to get them included. In our case, I work it all out and just tell her what to do, say or sign and she enjoys the profits.