Need to raise 2k

frugglewump

Current card situation

Mint £3000 at 0% until July 06 then 14.1%. Limit of £5125
Egg £0 - limit of 2k - shoudl be easily lifted to 2.5k so I can do a full SBT of 2k. Anniversarry month is September
HSBC £0, limit of 6k , 5.6% for 5 months then 18.9%
Barclaycard £0, limit of £1575, LOB 6.9% offer (2% charge?)
Cahoot flexible loan £5430, limit 6k (recently dropped from 8.5k) 8.5%


I need to raise an extra 2k for the upfront costs of buying a house. I could take it from my cahoot flexible loan (8.5%), but would like opinions on this alernative method:

Use my Egg card to SBT 2k and then switch it to a lower amount. I can get 1800 onto Mint 0% at a cost of about £30 and move the rest over to HSBC at 5.6% for 5 months.

The reason I would like feeback is I'm leery about what happend when the 0% runs out at the end of July. Currently I have to find somewhere to put £2k - that doesn't need to involve opening a new card - I could take the Barclaycard 6.9% LOB (Since my Egg card was opened in 2001 I'm not sure if i'll get an anniversary offer next year).

With the extra spending (assuming it all goes through) I'll have to find somewhere to put £4k and I don't expect good card limits from the remaining lenders - I was astonished by the limit Mint gave me when i opened the card in october.

Galstonian

You currently owe £7430 out of a potential £18575 and do not mention any savings, I would be loathe to advise you to increase your unsecured borrowing to enable you to obtain secured debt.
Obviously everyone's situation will be different but unless you have a plan on how you get to owing nothing on credit cards and unsecured loans it is folly to rely on getting good deals.

If you are going to go ahead then getting as much of the 2K onto Mint until July seems reasonable, if you have credit card cheques from them it is worth reading the terms and conditions, you may be able to pay cash into your current account with one but do watch the charges, for 6 months it may work out cheaper just to get it onto BC's LOB or HSBC's offer rate.

I don't know about the Egg anniversary but ISTR there was a limit to how often you qualified for them. In fact, I'm not even certain the anniversary offer was available in 2001, have you used them at all?

frugglewump

Galstonian wrote:

Obviously everyone's situation will be different but unless you have a plan on how you get to owing nothing on credit cards and unsecured loans it is folly to rely on getting good deals.

Well yes, that's why I haven't closed down the barclaycard as planned - if I can't get any more good deals then the LOB is useful. I have savings of 1k, otherwise I would have to raise 3k for the legal fees etc. Also OH has a loan that finishes in June and will be able to contribute after that - however I'm planning for worst case scenario. At present my minimum payments are £170 but I pay £290 - with this extra debt min payments will rise to £225 until July.

I don't know about the Egg anniversary but ISTR there was a limit to how often you qualified for them. In fact, I'm not even certain the anniversary offer was available in 2001, have you used them at all?

Yes I've used it for the past 3 years. Every year I check the time limit and it has changed: they say cards opened before X year have anniversary offers that run out on Z year - last year my offer ran out in 2004, this year it changed to 2005....