Best way to clear £3,500 credit card debt

forsya

Hello

Well I won't repeat what the others have said!!!

Not a stupid question, I never knew what it was before I came on here!!!

SOA is your statement of affairs, so listing's of your incomings and outgoings and also your debt and interest rates/monthly payments etc. so we can see what's going where and how best to pay it off.

Hope that helps!

roversbabe

martinbsp wrote:

Wow, straight forward consensus there then! The secured loan option is going in the bin.

Stupid question time - what's an SOA?

Thanks for all your advice, I'll post my SOA up as soon as I know what it is!

Hi Martin

SOA is statement of affairs - a list of your income and outgoings - see southernscouser's sticky here.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=107280

I agree with everyone else - don't go down the secured loan route.

rb

scheming_gypsy

Well if he didn't know what one was before, he does now.

lynzpower

scheming_gypsy wrote:

Well if he didn't know what one was before, he does now.

LOL :beer: :beer:

davek1

don't don't don't do the secured loan mate believe me i speak from experience its bad news very bad news. Speak to your creditors and come to an arrangement to repay at a monthly amount you can afford and stick to it. if you can pay more then do so. After a while if your situation changes ask for a full and final settlement figure which you might be able to repay.

Rachman_2

If you take a secured loan, it will be a second charge over your property (and for £3.5K it's simply pointless - as others have said, there will be a raft of charges for it and it will take FOREVER TO PAY OFF unless you are strict).

When you come to remortgage, you will restrict your choice of lenders massively by having a charge that will need an amendment doing (more fees out the door) to rerank itself as second on your property - plus it's probably going to cost you in fees to your first lender and it's probably a breach of the terms of that mortgage too.

If you owe them £3.5K and your credit rating is poor - you really need to get a piece of paper and work out the extra interest you pay by not moving your mortgage and the costs you will incur in moving - given your credit rating is already screwed up (And applying for more cards will often worsen it

martinbsp

OK, I won't forget the SOA in a hurry! I'll get that done for tommorow. I'm just having a look at it now. It's starting to peel back the reality of my spending! I'm not a big spender but one thing that's really clear is how much seems to go on micropayments for things like a paper or a bar of chocolate. If I cut these out there must be a fair chunk in here.

I was so close to applying, I guess I could have kissed any financial freedom goodbye for a long while if I had.

Hope your all having a great Easter break. Cameraderie in debt!

jeff1969

Just out of interest, has the OP tried capital one 5.9% for lob?

From what I understand of this company they will take virtually anyone on no matter what state their credit rating is in, if accepted it would reduce the egg "standard rate" considerably