I'm ready to Stooze....

YorkshireBoy

For background information, see my previous threads...

**** Somebody give me a quick credit score ****

**** Is stoozing really this easy? ****

Apologies here for what is a very long post - but it may help others?

Here goes, I’m ready to start stoozing. I’ve read the articles and posts on the subject on this forum, developed a spreadsheet model, and here is my plan.

I’m initially going for a Virgin 0% 9 month card and will try to get a £10K limit. I’ll check again that the BT to my current account (95% = £9.5K) is free. I’ll check again that I can pay only £5 per month for the first 8 months by DD (minimum payment) and then pay the final balance of £9,460 in month 9 and before the 0% period expires. At £5 per month, I’ll obviously fund the first 8 payments from my current account and only delve into the stooze pot for the final payment.

Next month I’ll go for the Capital One 0% 18 month card (many thanks to MartinsLoveChild for offering to supply this), and again going for a £10K limit. As I understand, the terms on this are slightly different. There is a fee for a BT to my current account. Its probably a percentage but I’m hoping its capped at a sensible figure. Also, the payments differ in that they are a percentage of the remaining balance (possibly 2-3%). Assuming 2.25%, the minimum payments on this card start at £225 and fall to around £159 in month 16, leaving a final payment of £6,948 in month 17 (deliberately budgetting to complete a month early just in case!).

The month after I’m going for an Egg 0% 6 month card, again going for a £10K limit. I understand that BT’s on this card (again to my current account) are free, and the minimum payments are 2% of the remaining balance. The repayment format operates in a similar way to the Capital One card, with repayments starting at £225, falling to £210 in month 4, leaving a final balance of £9130 in month 5 (again working worst case scenario and settling a month early to avoid any problems).

I will then take the Egg anniversary offer in June next year, with another £10K.

My spreadsheet shows that my stooze pot balance in November 2006 (when all deals have finished) is a nice and tidy £963, giving an approximate income of £600/year. I’m aware that I may get chance to continue my stoozing after this date, or in the interim, but at the moment I’m just concentrating on the above deals.

The money will be stoozed in my ING account (reasonable rates and I know that transactions are always 3 days only) in 3 separate account names – one for each card.

Edit: just realised that I haven’t applied the 95% rule on my spreadsheet, so my figures will be a “little” out.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts on the above plan as to…

1/ Do I sound like I've FULLY understood what I’m about to embark on?
2/ Am I applying in the right order?
3/ Should I apply for them all at the same time, or increase the interval between applications?
4/ Do my figures sound reasonable?
5/ What about the so called Egg “mule”? Can I make use of it?
6/ Have I exhausted the list of 0% providers, bearing in mind MBNA (linked to the Virgin card above) seem to be linked with a lot of them?

Should say here that I’m not too worried about the impact on my credit rating as mortgage on 2 year deal expiring in October 2006, and will be fully paid off 3 months later in Jan 2007 (with endowments and savings). I don’t foresee that I’ll be re-mortgaging, or need any more “official” credit, in the near future. Car only 18 months old with 18 months interest free credit still to go.

Obviously, with all the help I’m getting (hopefully!!), I’ll post back to let you all know how things are going – especially the successes, credit limits etc, but hopefully no problems.

In closing, I’ve racked my brains and can think of only 3 potential issues…

1/ Late/missing payments - I’m pretty disciplined with my money and account management (Microsoft Money) so should be OK here.
2/ Redundancy – Upon receiving notice, I may have to shut down these cards quickly and pay them off before I leave my employment. That way, my “conventional” savings accounts will be back to their normal level so may get help sooner with benefits if unemployed a while (unlikely as an electrical engineer but have to plan for it).
3/ Credit rating shot to bits – As I say above, I can’t see me needing credit in the foreseeable future.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me on a very long post. Over to the experts for their comments.

YB

kinesin_2

Stoozing is easy if you have a good credit rating and don't get declined for Cards when you apply - it's then just a case of good money management and never every spending the stoozed balance.

On my initial read (hey it's a long post ) you plan paying off the virgin card at the 9 month point. I'm not sure if it's just the way it reads but this should be paid off using a BT from a new card applied 6-4 weeks before the Virgin card runs out. Doing this allows you to put your stoozed balance in better rate saving account as you don't need to withdraw ever.. (just pay in the monthly minimum from your wages) - hence allowing those saver bonuses.

I would avoid any card that takes a % of the BT no matter how long the interest free period is. The normal rate is 2% of the BT.. aka 10k= £200 fees which is a massive amount to reclaim in interest, better stooze round on 6-9month cards with no percentage fee.

The Egg mule thing - EGG cards let you do SBT (super balance transfers) to your account at no fee - at any time, not just within the intro period.:D You can therefore BT from another new card to EGG and then SBT off to saving account.. i.e traffic/mule your money into savings, when the CC wouldn't normally let you.

One thing I would watch is just don't push too hard too fast, applying too offen will hit your credit record and there push your limits down.

OH - and set up direct debts to pay the minimum ammount or something will go wrong - and then the fees kill any interest made.

Fairwinds

The capital 1 BT fee is capped at £50 , so that should help,but the minimum monthly repayment is 3%

YorkshireBoy

Thanks for the replies so far.

kinesin wrote:

I would avoid any card that takes a % of the BT no matter how long the interest free period is. The normal rate is 2% of the BT.. aka 10k= £200 fees which is a massive amount to reclaim in interest, better stooze round on 6-9month cards with no percentage fee.

I'm only aware of the Virgin & Egg cards that don't charge a fee for BT's. Which others are there?

kinesin wrote:

The Egg mule thing - EGG cards let you do SBT (super balance transfers) to your account at no fee - at any time, not just within the intro period.:D You can therefore BT from another new card to EGG and then SBT off to saving account.. i.e traffic/mule your money into savings, when the CC wouldn't normally let you.

So have I got the order of applications right?

Just spotted a loop-hole in my knowledge (and probably a fundamental one). How about this? I get the Egg card first with a £10K limit, BT £9.5K across to my current a/c (and onward to the stooze pot), get another (Virgin) card, BT £9.5K to Egg, thereby putting Egg into £9K credit. BT another £9.5K from Egg to my current a/c (now have £19K stoozed with £500 of available credit on each card - which I know I MUST NOT USE), and carry on like this with as many cards as I can get.

I still make minimum payments from my stooze pot (through DD's from my current a/c) directly to the card issuers (eg Virgin & Capital One), and as long as I repay the original £9.5K on Egg within the 0% period (thereby leaving a zero balance) everything is OK. All I'm in effect doing with the Egg card is firstly putting it into credit (with BT's from Virgin & Capital One), and then transferring EXACTLY the same credit to my current a/c by the (always free?) BT facility.

Now if I've got the above correct, then the best card to have for managing my stoozing is the Egg card - so should I apply for this first?

And finally, once the 0% period is up on the Virgin & Capital One cards (and any others I might get), I may as well close them down. Correct?

Thanks again for all your help, I want to do it right first time.

YB

YorkshireBoy

GordonD wrote:

...but the minimum monthly repayment is 3%

This doesn't help quite so much!

Thanks for the info - I'll redo my spreadsheet now.

YB

Galstonian

But repayments can always come out of stoozed money so it shouldn't matter too much what the minimum is.

YorkshireBoy

Galstonian wrote:

But repayments can always come out of stoozed money so it shouldn't matter too much what the minimum is.

Yes, but this means on a £10K Capital One stooze my minimum repayment is over £200/month - not so good when compared with Virgin @ £5, although I suppose "some" free interest is better than none at all!

Thanks for your help
YB

zcaprd7

Capital One is being 'normal' here, with Virgin (and MBNA cards) its a bonus.

Virgin is good in that it has no BT charges generally associated with MBNA cards.

Martinslovechild

YorkshireBoy wrote:

Yes, but this means on a £10K Capital One stooze my minimum repayment is over £200/month - not so good when compared with Virgin @ £5, although I suppose "some" free interest is better than none at all!

Thanks for your help
YB

YB,

The minimum on Capital One is 3%, therefore the monthly payment on £10,000 is £300/month.

Your repayment schedule over the 18 months will therefore look something like this (based on £10,000).

Month...............Balance...Payment
April 2005...........£9,700.00...£300.00
May 2005...........£9,409.00...£291.00
June 2005..........£9,126.73...£282.27
July 2005...........£8,852.93...£273.80
August 2005.......£8,587.34...£265.59
September 2005..£8,329.72...£257.62
October 2005......£8,079.83...£249.89
November 2005....£7,837.43...£242.39
December 2005....£7,602.31...£235.12
January 2006.......£7,374.24...£228.07
February 2006.....£7,153.01...£221.23
March 2006.........£6,938.42...£214.59
April 2006...........£6,730.27...£208.15
May 2006............£6,528.36...£201.91
June 2006...........£6,332.51...£195.85
July 2006............£6,142.54...£189.98
August 2006........£5,958.26...£184.28
September 2006...£5,779.51...£178.75

YorkshireBoy

MLC

Yes, agree, I've got this on my stooze spreadsheet now, along with Egg and Virgin repayments (see OP). I suppose I was just being greedy after the Virgin £5 minimum payment surprise.

My spreadsheet shows a full balance profile showing month by month transactions (self-calculating) and cumulative stooze profit. I'm also dead chuffed its all on a spreadsheet that fits my lap top screen without having to scroll. Very tidy if I say so myself! This, coupled with Microsoft Money, should make sure everything runs smoothly.

Update: have applied for the Virgin card today, and have to phone on Monday to get my credit limit. I'm still deciding how long to wait before going for other cards.

So this is it then - I'm now a stoozer! (still, I've been called worse!)

YB

Longpockets

Yorkshireboy, I think I am right in saying that although you can repeatedly SBT money through your egg card during the introductory 9 month 0% offer this is NOT the case for the subsequent anniversary offers. When you become elegible for the anniversary 5 month offer you can only SBT the money at 0% during the first month of the offer. If you subsequently BT money from another card onto the egg card then this will effectively repay your SBT with egg. If you then SBT this new money from egg to your current account then this will be classed as a balance transfer at the normal egg rate. What you should do is take advantage of the anniversary SBT from egg, having first maxed your credit limit to 15K during the previous few months and then do not use the card again during the 5 month anniversary period. If you wish to still have a card to act as a mule then apply for the egg blue card which I think you can get after having your normal egg card for 6 months or so.

If anyone thinks there are errors in the above please feel free to comment.

Hope this has helped.