Help and advice with small amount of dept

jissurfing

Hey,

I spent awhile traveling last year and have some un paid debts;

Natwest credit card: £1300
Post office credit card: £2300
£3600

My take home pay is £248 a week. By the end of the week I have about half of that left. After food, rent etc...

I know it isn't that much but it's still something I need to get on top of.

Which card would you recommend I pay off first? Is it worth moving the debt onto one card? How much should I pay off a month and how quick do you think it could be paid off.

Any tips will be really helpfull

Thanks
jack

Thanks

cutestkids

Hi

You will need to give details of the APR on the two different cards so we can see which one would be costing you the most.

asparagus1968

hi, once you know the APR's try putting the info into the snowball calculator (in the stickies,sos don't know how to link)
it will show you cheapest way of paying cards off.

Tixy

Hi

When you say the debts are unpaid do you mean you are behind with payments? or that you have kept up with minimum payments?

What are the APRs and the limits on both the cards?

In terms of how much you can afford to pay off - the £124 (half £248) you have left is this after paying all essential living costs ie ctax, utilities etc, and after budgeting for things like travel costs, mobile etc? i.e is it your disposable income?

jissurfing

Hey,

Thanks for the quick replies.

Both of the cards are 16.9% the post office card limit is 2.5k
The natwest is 1.5k. I save around £400 a month which is unspent.

I am not behind with any payments and I have a pretty secure job.

Would you reccomend spending every penny of my disposable income on paying off my cards? If so with one first?

Thanks Jack

vickthestick

If you save £400 a month how much of that is sitting around gaining very little interest whilst you pay big amounts of interest on your credit cards?
Pay off your cards before saving and you'll be quids in.

jissurfing

Good point. So which do I pay off first? Or both at the same time?

Tixy

As the APR on both is the same it probably doesn't make a huge amount of difference.

You might want to target the smaller debt first, and the once thats paid off in full you could see if that provider might offer you a 0% balance transfer promo, which if they did you could use to move the other debt across and pay off over the 0% period.

Do you bank with natwest? or someone else? another thing you might want to consider is seeing if you are able to get a new 0% balance transfer card from another provider, to move 1 or both balances across and reduce the overall cost.