Credit Card Shuffle - Help!!!

gordyh

I have a Barclaycard & Virgin credit card. I currently have the deposit for the property I am buying in an online savings account. Does anyone know how I can reduce the interest on the credit cards by using the money in my savings account? I will still need the money back in my account for when I purchase the property (which will be in 3 weeks time).

I have read about the credit card shuffle but I don't have the spare card to do this with. I was hoping that someone might be able to have some advice on how to reduce the interest on the cards by doing a balance transfer and still having the money for my deposit.

Hope this all makes sense!!

Thank you!

grumbler

gordyh wrote:

...I have read about the credit card shuffle ...

Credit Card Shuffle :

This is a four-step system that moves your debts between existing, not new, borrowing to the most efficient place.

How can anybody give you any advice without knowing what balances, credit limits and APRs you have on your cards and whether any of your CC companies offers you some special deals on balance transfers?:confused:

gordyh

Sorry. I have a Barclaycard which is at 18.9% and an outstanding balance of £4650 (Limit £4700). I have checked with them and they can offer me 6.9% for the life time of the balance. Then i have £5500 (Limit £5500) outstanding on my Virgin Card at 16.9%. Virgin have offered a )5 for 9 months. I have £11k in my savings account to buy a flat.

grumbler

:think:
AFAIK (check this!) Virgin allows transferring balance (overdraft) from a current account (transferring money into current account). If this is correct, I see the following scenario:

• Clear Barclaycard using your savings
• Transfer £4700*90%=£4230 balance from Virgin to Barclaycard (2.5% fee)
• Clear £1270 remainder on Virgin using your savings
• Transfer £5400 ‘overdraft’ from your current account to Virgin (£5400 money from Virgin to the current account). This will cost you £50. £5400+£50=£5450. £50 reminder of the Virgin balance is for the interest (assuming that the monthly interest is less than £50)

As a result you ‘lose’ about 4650+1270-5400=£520 of your savings and your debt gets £520 smaller. You can avoid this by asking to increase your Barclaycard limit to £5500/90%=£6150 and transferring the full £5500 balance from Virgin. Also you really lose about £155 in fees, but you will recoup this later due to the lower rates.

In fact this is not that simple because before making the first balance transfer you must receive a statement with zero or small positive balance on your Barclaycard. The same applies to the second transfer and Virgin. All figures are approximate. When paying the balances off take estimated interest into account.

Everybody is welcome to correct my errors

Probably somebody will be able to offer some better plan and clarify the point of transferring money from Virgin to a current account.

Coupon-mad

grumbler wrote:

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Probably somebody will be able to offer some better plan and clarify the point of transferring money from Virgin to a current account.

Can't come up with a better plan, but can certainly vouch for Virgin card crediting money to your current account (make sure you make it clear you're asking for a balance transfer to current account though, not a cash advance).

I recently came to the end of 9 months at 0% with Virgin Card, and every time I reduced the balance a fair bit I phoned up and asked for a BT into my current a/c, to maximise the 0% offer. There were no fees but I think that's only because I was in the introductory period.

HTH