Cashback better than stoozing ?

DarkShadow

Dear All,

I have been trying to compare a lot between Stoozing & Cashback card.
See, you go for a 1 year Stoozing. You spend £500 a month. Pay the minimum balance & put all the remaining money in a savings account, it offers you max 6%. End of the year you get £15 gross interest which is £12 after tax.

Spend £500 a month on a 1% cashback card, you get £5 everymonth. End of the year this amounts to £60 (no tax cut) which is used towards the following months purchases.

I personally started off by stoozing, I had a Halifax 10 month 0% purchases. Used it for 6 months and stopped using. I only pay the minimum amount now. At the end of 10 month I will pay the full.

I now use Amex 5% and Shell Citicard at shell fuel stations (where you get 6%). I dont have the stress to pay part and then transfer the remaining to a savings account yet I get more money.

I am not a big stoozer i.e. using transfer balances over the years, etc.

Can anyone tell me whether I am following the right direction or not?

Regards,
Dark Shadow

Norfolk_Jim

perhaps for you, some hard core stoozers have tens, even hundreds of thousands on deposit while theres a limit to how much you can spend.

Now if only I could find things to buy on my credit cards that I could immediately turn back into cash, maybe your method would then be better but I'm not aware of anything like that

YorkshireBoy

DarkShadow wrote: »

Can anyone tell me whether I am following the right direction or not?

Not sure I agree with your slow-stooz profit for that level of spending.

Have you used the calculators over on the stoozing site?...

http://www.stoozing.com/slowcalc.htm (slow-stooz)

http://www.stoozing.com/cashcalc.htm (cashback)

In essence though, you should never milk a slow-stooz card for it's full duration because your money won't be earning interest for long enough. Far better to switch to another slow-stooz card (or your reserve cashback card) for the remaining few months. The exact point will depend on your stooz pot interest rate. I used to work on 3 months before the end, but that was when rates (in general) were around 6% gross and my cashback card paid 1%.

MJS996

DarkShadow wrote: »

Dear All,

Can anyone tell me whether I am following the right direction or not?

I came to the same conclusion as you - I did the Halifax 0% purchases card, and then I got all my stooze money stuck in Icesave and sweated on that for a few weeks, and when I finally got it back I looked seriously at how much effort I'd put in, moving money around etc. and how much interest I'd earned, and decided that, for me personally, it just didn't justify the aggrevation. Since then I've decided to go for a cashback card instead.

Having said that, I can see that if I had an offset mortgage and applied myself to it properly, then it probably would be worth doing and I can see why people still go with it, but for the way I was doing it, and with savings rates on offer now, it's just not worth it for me

Cheers
Martin

Wyndham

I'm not sure how you get £15 at the end of the year from stoozing? Working on £500 a month at the end of the year you'd have around £180 from stoozing at 6%. This is without taking into account minimum repayments, but unless they are in the region of £165 over the year, then I think your Maths is wrong?

LongTermLurker

DarkShadow wrote: »

Dear All,

I have been trying to compare a lot between Stoozing & Cashback card.

Many people do both. It's still easy to get two or more cards, so a wise man chooses AMEX, a good 1% Visa/MC and an MBNA card (or 2 or 3... ). They transfer the MBNA balances into their current account and thence to a savings account/offset mortgage. They use the AMEX card where they can for 3 months, and use the MC/Visa for everything else. They may even go "specialised" by having one of the new 2-3% off food & fuel cards...