Last 16K - any advice?

5tandy

I'm very new to this and wondered if there is anyone out there with a good solution for paying off my last 16K...
At the end of my current fixed term in November I will be paying off a large chunk of my mortgage with some inheritance money. This should leave me with a balance of approx 16K:j. Having done some number crunching, I can afford to pay off the 16K in a year with some serious tightening of belts meaning I could well be MF by the end of 2012, but I wondered if anyone had any ideas about how I might transfer the remaining 16K into some other kind of smaller (or even 0%!?!) credit card or loan arrangement so I no longer have to deal with the mortgage company at the end of the current fixed term? Mortgage calculators seem to be saying that I'd be paying around £1500 in fees and interest over the year and so it would be great to avoid that if I possibly can.
I spoke to my credit card company (Marks and Sparks Mastercard) to find out if they would take it on as a 0% balance transfer or included in their "0% on all purchases for 15 months" deal, but they said that they wouldn't take on anything from a financial institution. Is this typical of credit card companies? There is much talk of people taking advantage of 0% credit cards on this forum - has anyone done that who can spare a few minutes to explain how they did it?
As I said, I'm kind of new to this and would really value any input from you more seasoned MFWs - be it on credit cards or any other magical method of beating the mortgage man!:)

Sepa74

My experience is the credit card companies are pretty strict about taking balances from anything other than a credit card - even overdrafts!

If you can find a 0% card that doesn't charge interest on new purchases you could perhaps put as much spending as possible onto it and then transfer the money you save into the mortgage.

But no matter what you do, you need to make sure you have the money to pay off the credit card at the end of the 0% term, otherwise you'll wish you'd just stuck with the mortgage!!