Maximum limit on SBT cards?

mogwai

i have a grad loan of about £10,000 that i wanted to transer to an SBT card - I wanted to go with Egg so I could take advantage of the anniversary offer, as I only need 2 years to pay it back. Do you think Egg will allow me a limit of £10,000 straight off? Anyone have any experience with this? I am employed and earning a decent amount..

Thanks!

Anon

Difficult to say what limit they will give you as it depends on your circumstances, other available credit and their lending policy based on what they can see on your credit file. However, I understand that their maximum limit is £15,000 if that helps.

If you have good credit, then you may be able to get more than one card, therefore after the initial 0% period with Egg you could then roll the debt to another card then back to Egg when the anniversary comes round. However, I understand that Egg, like many (but not all) others now charges a 2% fee (max. £50) for each BT which you need to take into account.

Good luck

Anon

Rafter

Egg and MBNA are usually pretty generous with credit limits, but if you have only recently graduated and don't have much of a credit footprint you may not get that much.

Only way is to try an application and see how you get on.

As ANON says you probably will have to use a combination of cards initially.

R.

mogwai

Hi - i have been a grad (postgrad grad!) for 1 year, so hopefully they will offer me at least 5000? I'll try for 10,000 first, I assume its ok to reapply for a smaller amount..

I was gonna open another credit card in 6 months time with 0% and switch back to egg on my anniversary month 6 months later, if thats what you meant? I only need to do that twice, fingers crossed!!!!

Thanks!

Clariman

mogwai wrote:

Hi - i have been a grad (postgrad grad!) for 1 year, so hopefully they will offer me at least 5000? I'll try for 10,000 first, I assume its ok to reapply for a smaller amount..

What do you mean by, "I'll try for 10,000 first". You don't usually request a credit card limit when you apply for a card. The card issuer will decide what they are prepared to lend you and you have no say in it. On application forms, there is often a box where you can ask for a Balance Transfer from an existing card where you can specify an amount, but that is not the same thing. Quite often a card company will see you have requested a 10K BT but will still only give you 3K !

There is a survey of who gives the best limits here

http://www.stoozing.com/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1122629809

Clariman

mogwai

thanks! Looks like Egg is the most generous so thats a good start. And yes, thats what I meant by try for £10,000! Also, I just realised that I will be stuck with a 10,000 loan at 15.9% at the end of 6 months if I don't get another 6 month 0% to cover the gap til the anniversary offer rolls around...


ooerrr this credit card shuffle is harder than it looks....

Also, is it possible to transfer a balance from a card that is held in another persons name to your own card? or vice versa??

mogwai

ok so i have a strategy, can anyone tell me if theres any problems with this?
I have 2 debts i want to clear:
1) £800 on credit card
2) £9000 on grad loan at 6.5% (2% above base rate)

Im going to apply for an Egg card for 9500, assuming I get the BT Im going to:
1)Put it into a savings account (Egg at 5%) for 6 months
2)At end of 6 months, Im going to see if I can get another 0% BT to tide me over til my Egg card anniversary offer.
3) Only THEN, will I use the £9500 sitting in my savings account to pay off my loans, if no luck then I will transfer the £9500 back to Egg before the 15.9% kicks in, and cut my losses, and pay off the loan as over the 2 remaining years as usual.

Doing it this way ensures I don't end up with a 15.9% debt of £9500 after 6 months, if I can't get another 0% BT card to cover it, and also the 5% interest accumulated in the savings account for 6 months will offset the 6.5% I will be paying for that 6 month period..

The main reason for doing this is to free up some cash, as my overall payments will be £100 less a month with the 0% SBT thing...

Sorry for the long thing - hope someone gives me feedback on it!

YorkshireBoy

Have you factored in the £50 BT fee and 2% minimum payments each month? On £9.5K they'll start at £190/month.

And yes, you can transfer balances from someone elses card to your own.

mogwai

Hi - yes £50 is fine compared to saving about £1000 over 2 years, and i will be making payments of £400 everymonth, cos I want to clear it in 2 years, doing the credit card shift twice in the course of it...

plus i want to do this so i have some flexibility about payments later as the loan gets smaller, and i finally buy my house sometime next year....

does the strategy sound ok??

YorkshireBoy

In theory, it sounds OK.

But, to get your required credit limit, in my opinion you'll need to...

* have a £20-25K+ salary
* be on the electoral roll
* have a long banking relationship
* have a good, long employment history
* be a home owner
* have an impeccable credit history

How do you compare with these criteria?

mogwai

my salary's ok, on electoral roll, long employment history (3 years?? with 1 year gap for masters), but not a home owner!! and i think my credit historys fine...

aaarrrr, well theres only one way to know for sure, as long as my strategy sounds ok, and theres nothing obvious I've missed...

right im off to the egg website - but im going to apply for the egg savings and dump some money in there first <sneaky, sneaky>

thanks!