which card should I pay most off?

dan197

At the moment, I have about £17,500 spread across three credit cards. I have £8,000 on a new MBNA platinum, minimum payment is £80ish, it's 0% for another fifteen months. I have £3,000 on another 0% card, a post office one, which has another 11 months before any interest is due, minimum payment £75. The remaining £6,500, is on a standard nat west visa, the minimum payment is £150ish, and the interest is about £115 a month. Transferring that onto a 0% is a bit of a non-starter, for various reasons I'm not going to go into. My total budget for repaying them is in the region of £450/month. At the moment, I'm paying the minimum off the 0% cards, and lumping £300 off the nat west, thinking that is the best way forward as I'm not paying interest on the others. I'd be interested in whether anyone thinks that's the best plan, or is it a more sensible idea to lump it off the interest free cards so the debt is less in a year when I'll be looking to tart it across again. Thoughts appreciated. Ta.

opinions4u

Convention suggests that you should hammer the interest charging debt first.

In other words, pay the minimum payment on all and then throw the rest at the one with the highest rate.

It would, however, help if you listed the debys in the following format:

LENDER ...............BAL CURRENT RATE, EXPIRY GO TO RATE

MBNA ..................£8,000... 0%........ DEC 2011.... 24.9%?
POST OFFICE ........£3,000... 0%........ AUG 2011.... 16.9%?
NAT WEST........... £6,500.... 15.9% ...

While I think throwing things at Nat West makes sense, there is the risk, with MBNA in particular, that they will hammer the rate up to 30% shortly after you drop off the 0% offer rate.

I suggest you get over to the Debt-Free Wannabe board for help, because ideally you want to throw a lot more than £450 a month at the debt problem you have.