Clearing Overdraft

dandan's_mum

Hi, being new to this forum, I'm not sure I'm on the right board, but I'll carry on anyway! I am overdrawn on my current account by approx £1800 and I am trying to find the cheapest way to clear it ie getting a loan or paying it by credit card. Can anyone suggest the best thing to do? I am also changing current accounts so I'd like to clear the overdraft and close the account. Thanks

anniecave

For a start it would depend what your credit history is like. Also what is your income? Also what interest rate are you paying on your existing overdraft? And how quickly would you be able to pay it back? And do you spend a lot regularly on a credit card?

Why have you got the overdraft, is it a short term thing or do you need to rethink your spending etc to make sure you don't get further into debt?

If your income is high you may be able to get a high overdraft (possibly at 0%) on your new account and juggle between the two accounts for a little while and pay it off reasonably quickly.

You could also get a 0% interest purchases credit card, spend your normal stuff on there for a few months (groceries, any bills or spending you can put on a card) and use what you would have spent on the groceries etc to put against the debt. Then work at paying off the credit card and pay it off either before the end of the 0% period or do a 0% transfer at the end (but there are normally fees for this).

You could get a loan, but that would depend on how quickly you can afford to repay over. Alliance & Leicester keep sending me adverts for this, but I've no idea whether they are competitive or not.

There used to be offers where you could get 0% deals on credit cards and use them to pay into your current account as balance transfers, but I can't find the link right now, so maybe they are no longer available.

On a different note, do you have anyone you trust who could loan you some money in the short term? For a short term crisis I would ask either my parents or my brother. I have lent my flatmate money in the short term and she has paid me back before.

These are a few ideas anyway, I'm sure others could come up with some others.