Credit card help please

ellas9602

hello
I've been putting this off for ages now because I just don't know where to start. I want to tackle my (our)credit card debts so would appreciate a little advice. I can afford at the moment to pay off the virgin one. Then what? The BC (J) is my OH's he's had it for 15 years+ and they've always been horrible. Does phoning and demanding another rate as a longstanding customer work? How could I shuffle these around? I can also afford to add £100 more per month to repayments. Are there any good balance transfers I should know about?

LIMIT OWE Available RATE MIN PAYMENT

Mint £2,350.00 £2,107.91 £242.09 21% £47.43
BC Plat Sim (D) £3,150.00 £3,100.57 £49.43 6.80% £69.76
BC (J) £8,350.00 £1,245.27 £7,104.73 22.90% £24.10
Halifax £4,000.00 £3,624.97 £375.03 12.90% £44.28
M&S £1,800.00 £870.21 £929.79 3.90% £21.75
BC Plat M/C £1,500.00 £1,422.78 £77.22 16.90% £28.45
Virgin £7,900.00 £339.53 £7,560.47 26.50% £25.00
Egg £3,220.00 £2,138.75 £1,081.25 21.90% £59.08

I really do appreciate any advice you can give.
x

Trajal

Hi there!

There are a few balance transfer strategies out there, I'm no expert on those but I imagine someone else will be along shortly to advise you there.

However, have you put these figures through the snowball calculator to see what it claims is the best strategy in terms of what to pay first, and how much to pay on the others etc?

Also you may want to consider posting an SoA to see if you can squeeze down costs on anything in your budget to speed up the process.

slyracoon

Heres what I would do in your situation.

Pay off the Virgin first. Its the highest interest and the amount you owe is relativly low so you should be able to easily clear the balance.

Once its clear its highly likely Virgin will offer you a 0% balance transfer deal. I have MBNA/Virgin cards and as soon as a balance is clear they are quick to offer another deal. If they don't automatically offer one then call them up and ask if they will offer a 0% deal or long term life of the balance low rate.
You can then move ~£7k of your other balances to the Virigin card on a lower rate.

(Being offered a deal by Virgin is obviously dependant on you having an ok credit rating).

ellas9602

Hi

I've now paid off the Virgin and the balance shows zero. The offer online is 10 mths at 0% but this doesn't seem too grat considering fees. Has anyone had success with just asking for the rates to be reduced?

TIA really appreciate any help offered

getmore4less

Normal spends on M&S(3.9%) will move £900 to a cheap rate

if you use the money you would have spent to pay down a more expensive card.

ellas9602

Thanks for the suggestion. its a very high rate for spends though, sorryI should have mentioned. the card just had a cheap life of balance transfer then upped the rates recently.

I've just done the snowball thing too and it gave me 57 months!_pale__pale_