Stoozing advice wanted...

ajaxgeezer

... ok here's the background. I have a buy-to-let mortgage which, since rate rises recently, is actually costing me £30 a month (mortgage/buildings insurance minus rental). I have an MBNA credit card (nothing on it, 6k limit), a savings account with 6k in and a miniISA with 3k in. I also deposit £250 monthly into Abbey's 7% regular saver, A&L's 12% regular saver, and A&L's 6.1% current a/c. Some of this £750 monthly funding comes out of the savings account but into these higher rates accounts.

Today I borrowed £5600 on the MBNA card which will reduce the buy-to-let bill by about £30 a month (yes I can pay 10% a year without penalty). The MBNA rate was 0% APR but a 2% fee, meaning total repayable of £5712 by August. A D/D has been set up for the minimum payment. When August comes, swap the balance to A.N.Other 0% transfer card for as long as possible (9 months seems feasible?) but certainly until the end of November by which time I can charge extra rent to make the buy-to-let fund itself again, and the three drip-feed accounts will have matured (or have been closed in the case of the current account, all going into my savings a/c). This leaves my miniISA and savings account intact, making me money, and the only other fees to pay are the ones to transfer between 0% providers in August, about another £100 I guess.

If I can swap for 9 months in August that will be two lots of transfer fee paid, totalling about £200-£210, but I will have saved about £450 through keeping my miniISA and savings fed for 15 months. I don't want to simply use the savings to pay off some of the buy-to-let yet as I'll pay 22% on any profit when it's profitable. In an ideal world the buy-to-let will lose 1p per annum and I can keep the cash in savings????


Can someone much better than me at this please say either :

"Yeah, good move dude"

or

"Buffoon, you've overlooked this....... xyz"

thanks,
Martin

Bokken_2

Well just looking at your post quickly you seem to be working it out for yourself quiet well.
Just keep doing more of the same watch out for the transfer fees ,make sure your savings or BT /SBT earn enough to cover any loss through fee payments on the BT's.
Perhaps you may want to try running several 0% cards at once instead of the one.good luck,keep your eyes open for any stoozing opportunities.

ajaxgeezer

Thanks bokken, it looked ok to me but I'm uneducated in the field so was scared that I may have missed something obvious. A broken engine would look ok to me for the same reason, I simply don't know anything about the subject.

As for having more cards on the go, I don't know how I could run up the debt to transfer in the first place without making unnecessary purchases. Are there cards other than MBNA who will transfer it as cash to a current a/c?

Ta again!

Bokken_2

ajaxgeezer wrote:

As for having more cards on the go, I don't know how I could run up the debt to transfer in the first place without making unnecessary purchases. Are there cards other than MBNA who will transfer it as cash to a current a/c?

Ta again!

I would suggest reading up on Martins Credit card articles until you know the subject back to front this knowledge will give you the extra confidence and ideas that you need to try the stoozing in a different way.
Start looking at everything you do with a view to paying no interest and getting loans or funds at 0% and then maximising that saving.
Good luck