My Interest Overload

ruma_2

Hi,

New to this forum.

Have heard excellent things about the site forum and the really great people on here.

I have a decent job but have an overloaded spread of Credit Cards and Bank Overdrafts accrued over the years, with some high interest rates.

Could anyone advise possible alternatives to reduce the interest rates, such as other cards/banks to move across to and so on.

Here's my summary situation below.

Egg 'Money' owe approx £750; interest rate approx 16%
Egg 'Credit Card' owe approx £750; interest rate approx 27%
Lloyds 'Credit Card' owe approx £4500; interest approx 16%
MBNA 'Credit Card' owe approx £1000; interest approx 36%
Lloyds 'Bank Overdraft' owe approx £600; interest approx 13%
Halifax 'Credit Card' owe approx £600; interest approx 20%

TOTAL = Approximately £8200 owed.

The lower interest accounts & cards are maxed out on limits so I cannot even moves some moneys from A to B to reduce the interest amounts owed.

Got no CCJ's or anything like that so trying to avoid DMP route where its may be possible to shuffle things a little with replacement creditors you may be able to advise on.

Look forward to valued advice.

Thankyou ;-)

ruma_2

am i posting this on the correct forum area?

beanielou

Hi ruma & welcome to MSE
It would really help if you could pop up your SOA & we could have a look at it.
Sure someone will be along with a link soon.

ruma_2

Hi Beanilou. Whats one of those you mentioned?.
You will have to be gentle with me until i learn the lingo ;-)

bozzy120

Hi, welcome to the forum!

I think the best credit card at the mo is Virgin's which lets new customers move debt to it at 0% for 16 months with a one-off fee of 2.98%. So could just consolidate into one on that. What are your aims with regards to getting it paid off? I.e ideally you'd want to pay off within the 16 month interest free period.

GeorgeUK

SOA = statement of affairs. Showing your income, expenditure and debts.
The SOA calculator is a great tool for this.
http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Tixy

Hi Ruma, Welcome to the board.

Beanielou mentioned SOA, this is a statement of affairs, on here they recommend the link below. This shows the clever experienced folk on here all about your financial information and based on the information they can advise you on which cards might be suitable or how else you can reduce the interest paid. They will also offer lots of advice on how you can make cutbacks to your general spending to help pay off debts quicker.

If you go to the link below and choose to format for MSE (button at the bottom), then you can paste it to here.

http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

With regard to your cards the clever bods often advise actually ringing your current providers and asking if they will drop your interest rate - sometime it works and you may get a slightly reduced rate while you decide on a plan of action and every little helps. As they say if you don't ask you don't get.

urg123

HI Ruma

Firstly, well done for finding this site. It is one of the most helpful sites that you find. I'll warn you - it can be addictive. One of the most valuable things I did was to post a Statement of Affairs (SOA) on this site. It's a really useful tool that will help you to set out how you spend your money. If you post it on here there's lots of people who'll have a look and help you to shave your regular spending so that you can focus on paying off the credit cards etc.

The SOA sites is here: http://www.makesenseofcards.com/soacalc.html

Anothe useful tool is the snowball calculator: http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx

Hope this helps

urg x x

ruma_2

Hi all,
Thanks for start of helping. Very grateful.
Ref Virgin its same company as mbna card and i tried them and they didnt want to transfer becaase of the maxed out amount on mbna card. Any other card to try?

ruma_2

Anyone got a link to the current companies offering zero or low card transfer offers. I could try them I guess. Maybe someone would allow some of the amounts to be transferred?

MrsTinks

http://www.stoozing.com/cards.htm this link shows what cards are linked to what providers... if you have applied to several cards recently then don't apply for any more! if you have only tried the one then try one more with an unrelated lender