Help for a pensioner

princessleia

Help. My Mum who is in her 70s currently has a lovely credit card charging lots of interest that means she is only paying off approx £10 per month. I've tried to find a loan but because of her age cant seem to find anyone who's prepared to give her one (even though she's a homeowner). She applied to Virgin to balance transfer (she doesn't owe that much!) and was successful however the credit limit on the card is only half of the amount she owes (her current credit limit is 9 times the amount offered by virgin). Where the hell do we go from here?

itsgazza_2

I've just looked at the saga website and they have a balance transfer credit card with a 3% charge for an interest free 9 months

If this is cheap enough maybe you could do a balance transfer onto this?

Eydon

First things first - she has the Virgin card so I would transfer as much as you can on to that to make the most of the 0%. I know it will only take half the balance, but it's better than nothing. Virgin allow 95% of your credit limit I think.

Second - if you haven't done so already, set up a direct debit to pay the minimum amount off the Virgin card each month. This is very important because if you miss a payment, or are late, you will lose the 0%.

Third - pay as much as you can each month off the high interest card. Anything you can pay over and above the minimum will help to reduce the amount of interest you end up having to pay.

Fourth - consider applying for another card (as mentioned above you could try the SAGA card).

Fifth - depending on your relationship with your mother you could consider applying for a Virgin card yourself and transfer the remaining balance on to that. This would however mean that this part of the debt would now be your responsibility, so you need to make sure that you are comfortable going down this route, but it is an option.

EDIT: you say that she has a very high limit on the high interest card. It might be worthwhile phoning them and asking to reduce the limit to something more reasonable. The high limit might be putting other lenders off.

princessleia

Itsgazza & Eydon, thanks to you both for your suggestions. I will definitely look into both of them

JA1000

You will not be able to transfer direct to a Virgin card if you apply but you could do a 'bank transfer' where money is put into your account and then you use this to pay off your mum's balance.