how to best use £10,000?

InDeepDebt

A bit more number crunching for you.

Pay the £6k off the cards. Bank the remaining £4k somewhere safe - unless you can do an overpayment onto the loan - then do that leaving £6k on the loan.

So, assuming that you can't do an overpayment, you have £4k under your mattress. You'll probably find that your credit limits will go up AND you'll get some credit card cheques/balance transfer offers. Once you get one of these, transfer £6k plus the banked £4k onto the loan.

Downside is that transferring £6k onto a 0% card will incur a £180 charge (usually 3% of transferred balance). Plus, you have to find another 0% deal at the end of the term - incurring another 3% transfer fee.

I'd be tempted to pay the £10k onto your loan. Look at the current minimum payments on your cards, set up STANDING ORDERS for those cards for the current payment level and, for the card with the lowest balance (or the soonest ending low rate), bung overpayments of the monthly loan repayment amount onto it.

Hope that makes sense. Downside, to this is that some credit card companies require a DD being in existence.

Jim