What to do ? Credit card balances

Bollard

Hi Everyone this is my first post so please go easy on me.

I have been unemployed off and on now for the last 2 years, but now finally I have a regular income and the key focus now is to pay off some horrible credit card balances. I'm usually very adept at switching balances in an attempt to pay as little interest as possible. In recent months the amount of cheap Balance Transfers seems to have been significantly reduced, but the offers seem now to be returning.

The first question I have is there an Online calculator somewhere where you can put in all your balances, interest rates, balance transfer fees etc to work out the optimum spread around the accounts ????

If not maybe one of the forum members can help me.
I have just got an e-mail from Egg saying that they are offering a 4.9% transfer rate for 6 months with a 2.9% fee. I have £8,500 of my credit limit free to use.
I would like to transfer some of the balance on my Virgin Card currently just over £18,000, but the problem is that I have a couple of 0% purchase rates one for £3000 running out in June and one for £1700 running out in September, with the rest at a whopping 26.5%. If I did transfer £8,500 from Virgin to Egg then the first things that get paid off is the 0% purchase rates. On the upside if I did pay £8,500 of the Virgin card the lady said I could take advantage of the 1.9% balance transfer rate for 6 months that Virgin are offering. At the moment I have balances on other cards too which are at the 16-20% APR rate should I switch one of these to Egg instead ?
I hope this all makes sense and I'd really appreciate any help that you can offer.
Cheers

SarahNeedle1872

Bollard wrote: »

Hi Everyone this is my first post so please go easy on me.

I have been unemployed off and on now for the last 2 years, but now finally I have a regular income and the key focus now is to pay off some horrible credit card balances. I'm usually very adept at switching balances in an attempt to pay as little interest as possible. In recent months the amount of cheap Balance Transfers seems to have been significantly reduced, but the offers seem now to be returning.

The first question I have is there an Online calculator somewhere where you can put in all your balances, interest rates, balance transfer fees etc to work out the optimum spread around the accounts ????

If not maybe one of the forum members can help me.
I have just got an e-mail from Egg saying that they are offering a 4.9% transfer rate for 6 months with a 2.9% fee. I have £8,500 of my credit limit free to use.
I would like to transfer some of the balance on my Virgin Card currently just over £18,000, but the problem is that I have a couple of 0% purchase rates one for £3000 running out in June and one for £1700 running out in September, with the rest at a whopping 26.5%. If I did transfer £8,500 from Virgin to Egg then the first things that get paid off is the 0% purchase rates. On the upside if I did pay £8,500 of the Virgin card the lady said I could take advantage of the 1.9% balance transfer rate for 6 months that Virgin are offering. At the moment I have balances on other cards too which are at the 16-20% APR rate should I switch one of these to Egg instead ?
I hope this all makes sense and I'd really appreciate any help that you can offer.
Cheers

if you put all the balance/apr info into the snowball calc on whatsthecost.com, it will tell you which to pay off first, thus telling you which balances you need to transfer.... if you have a card that is attracting more than one interest rate i.e one for purchases, one for transfers etc, then use the highest interest rate, as any payments will be going off the part of the balance attracting the lowest APR

HTH, and feel free to pop over to Debt Free Wannabe for help/advice

Sx

martafdz

... what about a loan and pay then all off? :S