Mortgage, credit card debt and Portugal

dfeg

Hi Guys

First time poster and a bit of an unusual situation. Hope you can point me in the right direction. I think the best starting point is to give you some background information.

• We're married with 2 young daughters.
• We own our house outright with no official mortgage ( this is because my father bought it and we're paying him back, the house is registered in my name).
• I've never had a mortgage.
• We've run our own online business for the last 4 years, the start of which built us up debt which is now being paid off as the business is doing well
• We owe about £35k in debt which is scattered from loans to credit cards. The credit cards we've been
  juggling
  at 0%
• We're moving to Portugal in July and renting our house over here.

I was considering getting a small 5 year mortgage to pay off all the debt and leave us with something more stable for the move. The reason being is that once we're gone its going to be very hard to juggle credit cards. I would like to lower the amount we're paying out for the next year (and make repayments more stable) and then up the amount after we're settled so the total would be paid off in the next by the end of 2012.
I have no idea about mortgages but like the idea of abbey/santander as we currently bank there and it would open us up to their zero account making taking money out in Portugal easier (wecurrently also have a nation wide account so this isn't essential).
When the debt is paid off we'd be looking to buy a house out there but don't intend on selling our house over here as we've got someone moving in who is very reliable and would be a great tenant for years and i don't know if already having had a mortgage would majorly effect my rates. Our business is UK based and will stay that way, we will also have an address over here.

I know this is a pretty odd request but I'm lost as where to start.

I think the most important part is the making our current situation less erratic for the time being but still being able to pay the debt off early.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Damien