How can I make credit cards work for me?

NGlady2

I have a couple of credit cards


Halifax: No balance - however they have sent me a 'offer' recently with 10 months interest free balance transfers. I have an 'available' of £2.5k


Barclays platinum: £980 - interest free until march. And also £700 which is costing me around £13 interest per month. This was for a 'necessary' spend, I am paying the 'minimum' plus interest each month, but i think the payment I am making is going out of the interest free bit and not off the bit costing me money. Does this make sence? I have £700 left available on this card if i wanted to transfer anything over. But considering the 'interest free' ends in March, i don't think its really worth it?

Very: £200 for bedroom furniture - I am paying £25 per month on this, interest free until september 2012 - by september it'll be paid off. I don't think theres any real point in me 'tarting' this balance as i'm paying this off every month on payday and it'll only cost me money to 'transfer' this.

Edge store card £480 - i think im paying £12 per month interest on this. I was debating paying this off with my 'halifax' credit card but i think theres a 2% 'charge' to do this, but this is only really equivilant of one month. This was something I took out as a favour to a family member, who promised me £50 per month to pay this off, throughout its interest free period, but it never materialised so I have given up on them paying and now unfortunatly am going to have to class it as my debt.


I know i've got an awful lot of debt, but im just trying to 'find a way' to make it all easier to handle, I know what most answers will be 'stop spending on friverlous c--p and pay ur debt off' and I am making payments to all debt sources each month.

Would it be 'worth' the cost of transfering over to the halifax account for the 10 month interest period - making payments to this every month and then in 10 months applying for another?

I earn approx £17k including bonus which is 90% guranteed monthly, so I have a fair credit rating, but i come from a family with to be blunt, beyond rubbish money skills and i dont want to make the mistakes some of them have made.

Any advise apart from stop spending money and pay debts off?

Venusflytrap

NGlady2 wrote: »

Any advise apart from stop spending money and pay debts off?

What about: spend only what you can repay on demand?

Also, I would advise you focus on clearing those catalogue cards; the APR's usually lethal and you end up paying more than the item is worth.

CLAPTON

too dificult to read

list each debt
amount
say the APR
the minimum monthly payment
when the APR changes if 0%

Tixy

NGlady2 wrote: »

Barclays platinum: £980 - interest free until march. And also £700 which is costing me around £13 interest per month. This was for a 'necessary' spend, I am paying the 'minimum' plus interest each month, but i think the payment I am making is going out of the interest free bit and not off the bit costing me money.

It isn't - it will be going off the part of the balance you are paying interest on - credit cards must work this way now by law.

As clapton says you need to find out all the APRs and also for anyone to be able to really give any advice what is important is how much you can afford to pay off each month in total to your debts.

E.g. if you can pay off the £700 on the barclays in a couple of months then its unlikely to be worth transferring it to halifax. But if you are only paying off say £50 from barclays each month then it would probably be sensible to do a balance transfer from halifax to pay off this debt (although you need to know what the balance transfer fee on halifax is to calculate if its worthwhile) - which appears to be at an APR of around 22%.

Regarding the edge store card - you'll need to find out if you can do a balance transfer from a credit card to this card - some store cards its possible, but not all. If you can't balance transfer this then I would look to be paying the minimum payments on everything else and as much as you can possibly afford against this debt. If the interest is £12 a month thats around 30% APR.