Help me Clear my debt faster

davilown

All I can say is thanks to all of those people on this site for their help and advice o how to clear the mountain of debts I have.

One quick question though - I have various loans and CCs.
The main loan has 26 months to run at £334 p/month at 6.3% from sainsburys. (I think about £9000 left)
I have two from HFC totalling £225 and £500 - these I have doubled the payments from this month to pay off faster (not sure what the apr is though - prob lots!)
One loan from Dell finance ( started last month for £350) I want to pay this off after 10 months (0% option)
Barclays card at about £9945 min payment £250 p month 13.9%
marbles £600 min payment at £10 (but pay £35 p month) (13.9)
oh and an o/d of £1450
any ideas if I'm approaching this the right way? I don't want to take out another loan to cover these done that once already!
My income is about 1600 after ent but before any other bills

I have a three year aim to clear this

cheers

:beer: monster

magentadreamer

I'd proritise the debt in order of APR -so hit the HFC one's first off - also since they're little debts it'll give you a boost once you've got them out of the way. Then that money can be used to pay off the credit cards. Are you able to shuffle the CC's onto a 0% card or LOB card to get the APR's down? I'm also assuming that if you don't pay Dell off in the 0% period they'll sting you for hideous charges? Even tho' Dell is 0% I'd attempt to clear it within the 10 months.

Have you also done a financial spring clean and looked at your other outgoings in order to free up more money - I was suprised how much I could save by a couple of phone calls and a cancellation of stuff I didn't really need!

davilown

magentadreamer wrote:

I'd proritise the debt in order of APR -so hit the HFC one's first off - also since they're little debts it'll give you a boost once you've got them out of the way. Then that money can be used to pay off the credit cards. Are you able to shuffle the CC's onto a 0% card or LOB card to get the APR's down? I'm also assuming that if you don't pay Dell off in the 0% period they'll sting you for hideous charges? Even tho' Dell is 0% I'd attempt to clear it within the 10 months.

Have you also done a financial spring clean and looked at your other outgoings in order to free up more money - I was suprised how much I could save by a couple of phone calls and a cancellation of stuff I didn't really need!

Hi yeah have tried to cut back - taken £80 of DD off each month this way. Have just applied to transfer the barclay card balance to amex cc at 4.9% for life.
The hfc are high interest i think at 19.9% thats why i thought i'd hit them first
If I get offered the amex, is it worth phoning barclaycard to see if they will lower the interest for life?

cheers

:beer: monster

magentadreamer

You colud try ringing Barclaycard to see if they would but the Amex offer does sound good what you could do is is see what Amex would give you for a limit -then transfer all or most of the Barclaycard to it and the rest to Marbles if you can then ring Barclays up to see what they could do then transfer Marbles card to them

Amex do charge a fee ( I've got the blue card) - well at least I think they do - I've had one for a couple of years chipping away at the debt - soon to be cleared at I do remember being charged a card fee one year but not in subsequent years. They don't charge for BT's but only ever do BT's in promotional periods as the rate is much higher out of them. I find you get offered a promo BT on a yearly basis - mines just after Xmas.

davilown

magentadreamer wrote:

You colud try ringing Barclaycard to see if they would but the Amex offer does sound good what you could do is is see what Amex would give you for a limit -then transfer all or most of the Barclaycard to it and the rest to Marbles if you can then ring Barclays up to see what they could do then transfer Marbles card to them

Amex do charge a fee ( I've got the blue card) - well at least I think they do - I've had one for a couple of years chipping away at the debt - soon to be cleared at I do remember being charged a card fee one year but not in subsequent years. They don't charge for BT's but only ever do BT's in promotional periods as the rate is much higher out of them. I find you get offered a promo BT on a yearly basis - mines just after Xmas.

in the application I asked to transfer the barclaycard balance - do you think they will go off that for a limit?
if not I'm sure marbles will offer me a decent bt every so often - that has a £5500 limit.

btw I no longer have these cards to physically use - all i need to do now is stop the urges to phone up and ask for a replacement.

:beer: monster

magentadreamer

You could add the BT on the Amex application form and see if they will give that as your limit but if they don't give you all of the Barclaycard debt then shift what you can to Amex the rest to Marbles then by clearing Barclaycard you stand a better chance of getting a LOB offer from them as you'll have a zero balance card which you could always say please cancel my account......They'd rather have your interest on a monthly basis I'm sure!

davilown

Thanks to all for their advice - appreciated

:beer: monster

mountainofdebt

they are now charging 2% transfer fee.