Help please- moving abroad but have £2.5k overdraft with interest building!

saraholgate

I need to move to South Africa for 6-12 months in October but have two overdrafts: Barclays (£1250) and HSBC (£1450). Current rates of interest are approx 17% on each. I will not be working while in SA and naturally do not want to come back to a mega debt due to the interest building up. I have approximately £1000 I can use to pay off some of the overdrafts.
Basically what I want to know is how to approach the banks so that they can freeze the interest on the overdrafts so that the debt doesn't keep building and building. I want to pay off the debt as fast as possible but will not be able to pay anything off while abroad.
Any tips on what to say to the banks or any other ways of ensuring i dont pay huge amounts of interest in the next 12 months will be greatly appreciated!

Tixy

If you tell the banks you are going travelling out the country and cannot afford the overdrafts then they are likely to recall them straight away.

They are very unlikely to accept no payment on them for 12months. I would imagine it might be better to arrange to use some of the £1k to set up standing orders from another account to pay a set amount each month off each overdraft. This will show that you are willing to pay and reduce the chance of court action against you.

You could also ask them to freeze interest, if you can demonstrate you cannot, or will not be able to afford to repay them in full right now, although this may well cause them to recall the overdraft (on paper) and to enter a default on your credit file. Though they might then agree to freeze interest, stop the account and accept the token payments you have proposed.