Overpay mortgage or debts?

Deeperblue

I'd love some views on this as I have a lot of respect for peoples opinion on here.

We've had debt on CC's for a couple of years now, happily paying minimum payments without any problems but at the beginning of the year I decided enough was enough and started making a concerted effort to get rid of it all for good.

We've got about:
£7.5k on two 0% CC's (ending in Dec '11 and Aug'12)
£7kish loan at 1.5% (from NatWest, set as 1% above the base rate, so likely to increase soon)
£4k 0% to parents.
In addition we have a mortgage at 4.5% (no equity to change to better deal).

So, I was looking at the MSE news today and saw the Barclays 0% for 2 years card thats being offered and wondered.... should I just be tarting my credit card debt as long as I can on 0% cards and over-pay my mortgage, since technically thats my most expensive debt?

I'm currently overpaying debt by about £1k a month so if this was going towards the mortgage instead surely I'd save £1000's in interest in the long run?

I've been on the boards a while and don't often see people talking about paying off the mortgage before other debts so was wondering if theres a good reason for that?!

Thanks in advance.

Pinkbunnie

First off, I don't have a mortgage and know very little about it, but don't some charge you for paying it off early?

SJ1

The reason is that you will still have the debt after your interest free period has run out and what will you do then? Some people on here do this and then add it on to the mortgage (thus saving the interest on the mortgage in the meantime) but it sounds like you don't have any equity and it would b unlikely therefore that you could do that and therefore risky. So in my humble opinion this is a bad plan. I think you would be better placed to pay off the cards as at some point they will come out of the interest free period and you shouldn't assume that you will get another 0% deal but then again I am extremely cautious money wise...

SJ

Deeperblue

Thanks for your replies. I'm not exactly money savy myself (hence the debt and why I'm asking).

Pinkbunnie: I think you only get charged if you pay off the mortgage in the 'discount period', which we are out of now. Will have to check this though, thanks!

SJ1: 'at some point they will come out of the interest free period and you shouldn't assume that you will get another 0% deal'

Yes, thats a good point and I've seen posts on here from people getting into difficulty because of that very reason. :undecided

The thing is I've had a play with the over payment calculators and if I over-pay my mortgage by £8k as a lump sum at the end of this year instead of paying off the CC's I'll save about £11,000 in interest. If Barclay card let me transfer to 0% for 2 years, even if I start paying the debt off again in a years time, that's a lot of interest to save.