Credit cards vs loan

Fedupofbeingindebt

Good morning fellow DFWs,

I'd be extremely grateful for any advice you can give me. As you can see from my signature, I've got just over £8k worth of debt on my 3 credit cards. Egg is 0% until December and Halifax is 0% until September which has been helping a lot.

I pay more than the minimum on every card each month, however the interest on the Barclaycard is steep and has been costing me a fortune for the last couple of years.

Halifax have offered me a consolidation loan for 8.8% which has tempted me as the interest is much lower than my cards and my monthly payment would be significantly smaller than I'm paying now.

Is it worthwhile having the loan or would it be better to continue paying off the cards as I'm doing now?

Any help or advice will be very gratefully received.

bottleofred

Hi fedupofbeingindebt,

Debt consolidation only works for approximately 10% of people who try it and I wasn't one of them. I would advise you to try to switch to other 0% cards when the current deals run out and also try to do this with the Barclaycard or concentrate on getting it paid off quicker to save money on interest payments. Obviously though, it's totally up to you.

Good luck with whatever you decide

Red

lvm

You say you're paying more than the minimum on every card every month. Really you should only pay the minimum on the Egg and Halifax and throw every extra penny you can at Barlaycard - this will save you more interest.

Why not phone up Egg or Halifax and ask if they've got any deals for balance transfers for existing customers?