Shuffle which way?

persecuted-citizen

I have just come into a small windfall of around £10K and I am looking to use it to do a credit card shuffle with my current four credit card debts. I cannot pay them all off so I am thinking of paying off one or two of them in order to create some available balance on them. My hope is that the cards with the available balances will then offer me 0% balance transfer deals so that I can move over the other debts to save paying interest on the card debt that is left over.

Here are my four cards;
Halifax One Card (Balance =£4500 Credit limit = £9000) @ 22.95% APR
Egg/Barclaycard Card (Balance = £7000 Credit limit = £7500) @1.94% monthly interest
Amex Blue Card (Balance =£4800 Credit limit = £5000) @ 1.87% monthly interest
Virgin MBNA Card (Balance = £4880 Credit limit = £5000) @ 1.43% monthly interest

The obvious choice would be to pay off the Halifax card as it has the highest level of interest, and then pay what’s left off the Egg/Barclaycard as it has the second highest. But if they are not going to offer me a 0% balance transfer deal in the near future I wouldn’t be able to move the other debt.

I was wondering if anyone else on this forum has had any current experience of either Halifax, Barclaycard, Amex Blue, or Virgin MBNA automatically offering 0% balance transfer deals on cards that have available credit?

salau2

Barclaycard do this. Keep your eye on your myBarclaycard account under Products and Services and click transfers they also sometimes allow you to send money to your current account. MBNA also do this under card services.

CLAPTON

persecuted-citizen wrote: »

I have just come into a small windfall of around £10K and I am looking to use it to do a credit card shuffle with my current four credit card debts. I cannot pay them all off so I am thinking of paying off one or two of them in order to create some available balance on them. My hope is that the cards with the available balances will then offer me 0% balance transfer deals so that I can move over the other debts to save paying interest on the card debt that is left over.

Here are my four cards;
Halifax One Card (Balance =£4500 Credit limit = £9000) @ 22.95% APR
Egg/Barclaycard Card (Balance = £7000 Credit limit = £7500) @1.94% monthly interest
Amex Blue Card (Balance =£4800 Credit limit = £5000) @ 1.87% monthly interest
Virgin MBNA Card (Balance = £4880 Credit limit = £5000) @ 1.43% monthly interest

The obvious choice would be to pay off the Halifax card as it has the highest level of interest, and then pay what’s left off the Egg/Barclaycard as it has the second highest. But if they are not going to offer me a 0% balance transfer deal in the near future I wouldn’t be able to move the other debt.

I was wondering if anyone else on this forum has had any current experience of either Halifax, Barclaycard, Amex Blue, or Virgin MBNA automatically offering 0% balance transfer deals on cards that have available credit?

1.94% monthly is 25.9% APR
1.87% monthly is 24.9% APR

Venusflytrap

CLAPTON wrote: »

1.94% monthly is 25.9% APR
1.87% monthly is 24.9% APR

Both %s are quite high for such calibre of cards, so best to shift asap if possible.

persecuted-citizen

Hmmm.
I thought it was just a simple x12 calculation;
i.e.
1.43% per month would be 17.16% APR
1.87% per month would be 22.44% APR
1.94% per month would be 23.28% APR

Obviously I don't know how this works :think:

So the APR calculation actually makes the Barclaycard/Egg card the highest of the lot at 25.9%
Then the Amex card at 24.9%
Then the Halifax card at 22.59%
Then the Virgin MBNA at 19%

I have checked on online at mybarclaycard but they say there are no offers for me at the moment but that could be because the balance is more that 90% of the credit limit.

BUT! one thing I did notice on my new barclaycard/Egg online account is that their current interest rate for the card is 21.9% for product purchases and 25.9% for cash advances.
YET! if I select the previous months statement (when it was Egg) it says the rate for product purchases was only 20% and cash advances were only 23.29%!!
It looks as if all that barclaycard schpeel saying that nothing will change in the transition from Egg to Barclaycard forgot to advertise the fact that there will be an immediate 2% -2.5% rise in the rates. :mad:

Having now found the actual 'purchases' rate I am on with barclaycard (21.9%) it puts them at 2nd highest leaving Amex as the highest.

When I started them they all the best rates at the time (9% - 12%) but over the last couple of years their rates have all increased and ended up with very high interest rates.
They ALL need to go somehow but hopefully I can pick up a 0% transfer deal to soften the blow while I try and pay them off.