can any one help

jcton

At present i have 2 Credit card, details below.
Virgin Credit Card – 0% until Feb 2011 – Current balance £900
Halifax Plus Credit Card – 16.8%APR - £4,200
i have £1000 Premium Bonds which i purchased in 1975 (kind have forgotten about) and £4,500 in a savings account.
Should i look to transfer credit cards, or should i pay off cards with savings and bonds.
Can anyone suggest what i should do for the best? and any products (cards) that i should look at?

Any

Are you paying that 16.8% on Halifax currently???
How much is your saving account paying you??

You definately need to get rid off that Halifax cardand in Feb also the other one. either do a balance transfer or pay it off.

BT will cost you roughly 3% charge. You can get BT card at 0% interest for at least 12 months. So the question is - does your saving account pay you more??

Any

Barclaycard currently have a card with 0% interest for 16 mths.. Charge 2.98% I think.

jcton

Any wrote: »

Are you paying that 16.8% on Halifax currently???
How much is your saving account paying you??

yes currently 16.8% and
£4,500 is currently in a Halifax Guaranteed Saver Account which i belive is at 0.50%

jonesMUFCforever

I would certainly use most of your savings to get rid of the Halifax balance.
The premium bonds I would tend to keep (do you win small amounts each year?) just in case a big win is around the corner.

With what you save by not having to pay the Halifax card then you should be able to clear the Virgin card quite soon.

Any

jcton wrote: »

Any wrote: »

Are you paying that 16.8% on Halifax currently???
How much is your saving account paying you??

yes currently 16.8% and
£4,500 is currently in a Halifax Guaranteed Saver Account which i belive is at 0.50%

Just read after yourself - you are paying 16.8% interest on debt while you earned 0.5% on savings..... The debt costs you MUCH more then you earn on the same money in savings.

You have 2 options - either transfer the balance at 3% charge and move your savings to account with at least as good % interest (which might not be as easy due to low savings rates currently)
Or
Pay off the debt with your savings and start building up a new ones.
Still get an account that pays some better interest though. 0.5% is rubbish.

Any

If you transfer thebalance to the Barclaycard 16mths 0% interest at 2.98% charge, you will need to find savings account that earns at least 2.25% NET interest...
Otherwise you are better off paying the cards off with the savings...

jcton

i am new to managing my finances as i have just split from partner who took care of everything.

so im new to all this

MFWannabe

Definitely pay off your Halifax card with your savings. How much are you able to pay off the remaining card each month?

Any

FREEZ wrote: »

Definitely pay off your Halifax card with your savings. How much are you able to pay off the remaining card each month?

If OP is going to pay debt off with saving, she/he might as well do all of it..
debt = £5100
savings = £5500

Definitely no point of having to pay interest on Virgin and keep the Premium bonds for "just in case there is a big win around the corner" IMHO.

I am not against Premium Bonds, don't take me wrong, but I am against subsidising them with debt.

opinions4u

While I agree with the concept of pay off the debt, I would suggest that some savings are held back as a contingency fund (illness, unemployment, telly needing replacing).

Any outstanding debt should then be repaid from income going forwards and the contngency fund built up to 6 mnoths net pay after this.

(Using a Halifax ISA for any savings will pay you 2.8% tax free).