Virgin Credit Card

lisaspice

Hi,
I have a Virgin credit card with a blance of £10,000 on it. The interest seems to be going up. I called them today to find out what interest i'm paying. They said it is at 22% with the cash advance (£2200) at 35%. I asked Virgin if the payments I make could go against the cash advance element of it so the card is paid off quicker. Thay told me that the cheapest part is paid off first and cash advance paid off last. Can they do that?. My husband sais that when Martin Lewis was on tv, he said that you can insist that the most expensive part is paid off first but Virgin wasn't having any of it. I want to consolidate this as it is getting on my nerves!

pre123

its a payment hierachy and will be somewhere in the terms and conditions

Payment Hierarchy describes how payments are allocated, each time you make a payment against your credit card balance. Each credit card company will have their own payment hierarchy. As a general rule (and there are some exceptions to this, Nationwide being one), you can assume that any payment that you make against your outstanding balance, will be allocated to the cheapest borrowing first (i.e. the borrowing that attracts the lowest interest rate).

have you thought of a balance transfer to a 0% deal and/or life of balance card to reduce interest payments??

sheslookinhot

Yes, don't even think about paying interest on a CC. Transfer the balance to a 0% card. There are lots of them around.

cashbackproblems

sheslookinhot wrote: »

Yes, don't even think about paying interest on a CC. Transfer the balance to a 0% card. There are lots of them around.

Yes i would do this, for example halifax were offering 0% for 9 months balance and transfers! For your limit to be 10k you must have quite high income, if not and you find a card with a 4/5k limit open 2 cards and split the amount.

nickmack

lisaspice wrote: »

I want to consolidate this as it is getting on my nerves!

You must try and move the whole balance to either a 0% card or a Life Of Balance at a low rate. You have a large cash advance balance at a high rate which will remain stuck on the card accruing interest until it is completely repaid.

As a note going forward, it's not a good idea to withdraw cash from a credit card unless you are desperate and definitely not if you already have a balance.

Check out Martin's Credit card guides and I also suggest you visit the Debt Free Wannabe forum as there's lots of help and support there.