Balance Transfer without the fee

Ashamed_2

Not sure if this is going to be useful for anyone. I hope it is.

I recently contacted Barclaycard to get my interest rate reduced. No luck there. So my next move was to transfer as much of the balance as possible to another card with a lower interest rate. When transfering I managed to talk my way into wavering the balance transfer fee which should have been 2.5%.

I informed them of the following:

• I intend to reduce/pay off my debts.
• I will pay each month by direct debit.
• I will not use the card for additional spending.
• I will take the 10.4% APR for the life of the balance (rather than 0% APR for 6 months and then 21.9% APR thereafter

The reason I went for the "life of the balance" option rather than 0% for 6 months... This would be one of the last cards I would pay off due to others having higher interst rates, therefore it makes more sense in terms of overall accumalative interest saving. i.e.
48 x 0.86% on £10k = £14,855.12
42 x 1.825% on £10k = £20,088.28

Obviously the maths involved here were without any monthly payments being taken into consideration and based on my debt free plan. You would need to work it out again based on your monthly payment and projected payment completion date.

CannyJock

Barclaycard didn't offer you the 6.9% LOB rate?

http://www.barclaycard.co.uk/personal-home/cards/balance-transfer/index.html

Even with the 2.5% fee, it would have been a better deal.

Actually, re-reading your post I'm not sure what you mean here. You already had a balance on your Barclaycard, who did you transfer the balance TO? Barclaycard don't charge you a fee for transferring the balance to another company, and you don't ask Barclaycard to send your balance to the other company, you speak to the receiving company who effectively make a payment to Barclaycard and then add on whatever fee. Or was this when you wanted to bounce your balance back to the Barclaycard?

Ashamed_2

Sorry I wasnt very clear was I (.
I am at my credit limit with barclaycard. I transfered off from Barclaycard to Santander.
I think that once I pay off barclay car I may transfer money back on and use thier 6.9% for the life of the balance deal.

Is it wrong to keep transferring money back and forward between cards or are there no rules for this?

CannyJock

Ashamed wrote: »

Is it wrong to keep transferring money back and forward between cards or are there no rules for this?

With £55,554.73 of debt, the rule is to shuffle the debt onto the lowest APR basis possible while paying as much as possible as often as possible to the higher APR debt. If you've not already read up on snowballing then you definitely should.

http://www.stoozing.com/msoc/snowball_calc.php

Ashamed_2

Top man, reading this now.