Advice please

toriajw

Hi all
Im after a little advice, i currently owe approx £15000 on credit cards and overdrafts and im not getting anywhere with them as the payments im making are only paying the interest and at the moment across them all im paying over £350 a month.
Ive done my credit score on Experian and got a 753 which they say is fair, i was just wodnering if anyone could advise me the best route to go about getting a loan.
I was thinking about asda as they say if they turn you down they sent it to Freedom Finance whos rate is still lower than my credit cards and looking at it, I should have them all paid off within 7 yrs through them
I know most will say the last thing I should be doing is taking out more credit but if I dont get a loan to pay them all off then I will be paying them off forever.
Thanks Toria

(ps I dont use any of my credit cards anymore so there is no risk of me just spending on them again)

Rafter

Toria,

You don't say how much you earn, but I don't think you will get a great interest rate with that kind of borrowing.

I suggest you fill out a statement of affairs and schedule out your different borrowings and what interest rates you are paying and post on the 'debt free wannabee' board.

Although consolidating into a single loan payment would be nice and easy for you, getting control of your budget and prioritising payments might be cheaper in the long run.

You might want to try something called 'snowballing', paying only the minimum possible on your lower interest debt and throwing any spare income at the highest interest debt. Once that debt is paid off, you can then start on the next highest and so on.

As your debt comes down you may be able to get some 'life of balance' credit card offers or 0% balance transfer deals to help get your interest bill down further.

Simply transfering 20% credit cards to a 20% loan from someone like freedom isn't going to help.

you can find a statement of affairs calculator here:

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

good luck

R.