Advice needed please

FBB_2

I owe £2176 on a loan, £467 on a credit card, £200 on an interest-free catalogue and owe £800 on an authorised overdraft. A total debt of £3643. My credit card is charging around £5-6 a month interest and I am paying around £11 a month interest on my overdraft.

I'm thinking about consolidating but I get really confused when I try to find out what would be the best thing to do.

According to moneysupermarket's site, I have a 'good' credit rating, and the best loan it can match me to is from MoneybackBank (Alliance & Leicester): £3700 over 4 years at 5.9%APR. Repayments would be £86.46 per month with a total repayable of £4150 and a charge of one month's interest if I repay total before end of the term.

Apparently, I am eligible to apply for Abbey's credit card which has a 0% on balance transfers for 12 months + 2% transfer fee and an APR 0f 15.9%.

To me, it looks as if the loan would be the best option, but as I confuse easily, I wanted to check with some of you harder-to-confuse people

Also, I am not really having any problems paying back what I owe, but it would just be nice to have a clean slate and only one thing to pay each month. By the way, I do pay double the min.repayment on my credit card each month, and on my current loan I am paying £83.71 per month.

Can anyone advise me please, or just make it clearer to me what would be best? You might even think it's best for me to stay as I am, which would be fine really, I just wanted to check.

Thank you

mjdh1957

Have a look at http://www.whatsthecost.co.uk/snowball.aspx - play around with the different debt scenarios and see which way would be best in terms of interest paid.

Is there an early repayment penalty on your loan?

FBB_2

Thanks for the link, however, I couldn't really get it to work properly or maybe I just didn't understand it right. I think it's because I'm not sure what the APR is on my current loan and overdraft.

There's no early repayment penalty on my loan.

Moonbeam

It depends on all your current APR's -

There is no point in transferring debt you are being charged 0% on to 5.9%....so maybe not appropriate to change all of it....It also depends on the timescale for the debt - you mention 4 years on the proposed loan, but don't tell us how long is remaining on your exisiting loan - If you are extending the debt it also may not be worth switching.....

FBB_2

Moonbeam wrote:

There is no point in transferring debt you are being charged 0% on to 5.9%....so maybe not appropriate to change all of it....

Ahh...yes I see your point (Doh!):o I'm not sure of the APR on the loan, but I know it's a fair bit higher than 5.9% as it's unsecured with HSBC.

Moonbeam wrote:

It also depends on the timescale for the debt - you mention 4 years on the proposed loan, but don't tell us how long is remaining on your exisiting loan -

Yep, I see your point there too! My loan has about 2.5 years to go before it's paid off. My overdraft....well, I live in my overdraft and can't foresee being 'in the black' there until the loan and credit card are paid off. While my credit card hasn't got a massive amount on it, I am being charged interest on it, so I will definitely transfer to a 0% card a.s.a.p. I don't make purchases on it, so it shouldn't take too long to clear. I suppose it's my overdraft that bothers me the most. It never seems to go down and it's costing me around £11 a month to have it, in debit interest.

Starting this thread has made me see things a lot more clearly. Thank you for your reply.