0% CC to Pay Off Mortgage - good idea?

TurnaroundSue

Hi - Our fixed rate comes to an end next March (I know it's 12 months away, but would like to get organised!!). Using the snowballing techique our mortgage will be repaid in 4 1/2 years time (from now). What I was wondering was whether it was worth applying for some 0% credit cards and then use the monies to repay our mortgage - thus, reducing the amount of time left as all the monies will go towards paying off!! Any ideas/suggestions/advice/pitfalls would be greatly received. Many thanks :beer:

savingpennies

This is called stoozing. There is another board on here for just such a plan also look here for advice http://www.stoozing.com. (hope this link works not quite got my head round this) I'm doing this myself but don't have a large stoozing pot. I'm sure that more expert people will come along to advise.

nrsql

It's a good idea if you can be disciplined about it.
Make sure that you can apply the money to your mortgage without penalties.
Make sure you pay off the credit cards before the 0% rate expires (if you need to take the money out of the mortgage make sure that's possible).
Make sure you make the minimum payments.
Don't use the cc for anything else.

If you can't do all of these then it's probably not worth it.
I'm usually useless at payments but have been stoozing for about 16 months and haven't messed up yet - but I do tend to clear the balances over a month before I need to.

TurnaroundSue

Hi thanks - I've heard of stoozing, but thought it was just to keep in an account to earn interest on - didn't realise that it was also meant for things like this. Thanks for advice and the link (on my way there now as I type!!)

roswell

The only pit fall is ensuresing you get a a 0% every time and that the credit limit is high enough, a better option may bee to stooze the money in an offset morgage this way you wont pay interest on the morgage of the same value but have funds available should the 0% periode end or the card company requests payment in full.

Also watch out for balance transfer fees as this may undo your savings ....

tyllwyd

The one thing that occurred to me is that if you are on track to pay off mortgage in four and a half years, there isn't such a huge saving by going for 0% interest compared to a longer term, so to make it worthwile you would have to be careful not to get caught out by something stupid because you'd made things overcomplicated.

cazmanian_minx

The only thing you'd need to be careful of is running out of 0% cards - if you'd moved your whole mortgage balance onto cards and then ran out of cards to transfer the balance to when the 0% rates finished, you'd be stuck paying it off at possibly 12.9% or higher which would be a bit OUCH.

Caroline