Apply for a loan or wait?

nem39esis

I currently have several credit cards totalling around 20k of debt. A couple of them are on life of ballance rates Barclaycard and Halifax at 6.9% and 4.8% respectfully these have around 4k each on them, the rest are on cards with Barclaycard, Capital one, santander and and have 3k 7k and 1k respectfully.
My credit files from checking with noddle and checkmyfile are pretty good, never missed a payment and credit scores (for what theyre worth) are all good.
To be sensible i want to consolidate my cards into a loan with a lower payment so that i can get rid of them quicker, it makes no sense to me to be paying 16-20% interest on these cards as its money wasted.

If i applied for a personal loan what do people think are my chances, good idea?

A little more info:
Im 29
I have a house mortgaged with nationwide 140K left £480 a month payment- house value around 200k
Im married and the mortgage is in both our names
Partner has her own debts but has consolidated hers into a loan so is now managed.
I have 3 bank accounts with overdrafts of around £1500 each 2 are currently in credit one has around £700 left.
My slary is £27k a year and take home £1.5k a month

I did soft search with nationwide and had no problems however zoopa said i had too much borrowing?

Whats the best route?

R_P_W

I dont think anyway will lend you enough to do what you are suggesting here. I think the general rule of thumb is you can't borrow more than 50% of your salary (which you are already over). The bank cannot make you pay off the debt with the loan.

The only ways forward in my opinion is to snowball the existing debts and pay off the higher interest ones first.

tell_it_how_it_is

On the face of it, you're unlikely to get a loan for that amount. I'd suggest giving one proper application a go, with your own bank.

Failing that, as above, consider snowballing your debt (and look at reining in monthly expenditure where possible to allow you to chuck a bit more at it). Then when the total debt has shrunk quite a bit in a year or so, perhaps reconsider making a new lower loan application to save some money on the amount that remains.

19lottie82

I really don't think anyone will offer you a loan when you take in to consideration how much you earn and how much debt you already have, I'm afraid.

I would be very suprised if, when it came to the crunch, Nationwide would lend you what you are looking for.

As RWP says, take 50% of your current salary, and take away your outstanding debt. That is what a lender is likely to offer you, even with a good credit history.

DCFC79

nem39esis wrote: »

I currently have several credit cards totalling around 20k of debt. A couple of them are on life of ballance rates Barclaycard and Halifax at 6.9% and 4.8% respectfully these have around 4k each on them, the rest are on cards with Barclaycard, Capital one, santander and and have 3k 7k and 1k respectfully.
My credit files from checking with noddle and checkmyfile are pretty good, never missed a payment and credit scores (for what theyre worth) are all good.
To be sensible i want to consolidate my cards into a loan with a lower payment so that i can get rid of them quicker, it makes no sense to me to be paying 16-20% interest on these cards as its money wasted.

If i applied for a personal loan what do people think are my chances, good idea?

A little more info:
Im 29
I have a house mortgaged with nationwide 140K left £480 a month payment- house value around 200k
Im married and the mortgage is in both our names
Partner has her own debts but has consolidated hers into a loan so is now managed.
I have 3 bank accounts with overdrafts of around £1500 each 2 are currently in credit one has around £700 left.
My slary is £27k a year and take home £1.5k a month

I did soft search with nationwide and had no problems however zoopa said i had too much borrowing?

Whats the best route?

listen to what zopa said, you have too much borrowing, your debt is more than 50% of your salary so taking on £20k will increase your debts to 40k which is how the bansk will see it. Your going to have to cut back on your spending,

jamesd

Ask Halifax and Barclaycard if they are interested in having you transfer more money to their life of balance rates. They might be interested and if they are this could lower your costs.

You and your wife might try some use of 0% for purchases credit cards. If you can get one you can then put new spending on the card and pay the same amount off the most harmful or expensive existing borrowing. Most harmful at the moment is probably the overdraft use.

Nationwide might have arrangements for payment holidays available. Worth asking, saying you're interested in reducing your unsecured debts more quickly. Also ask how it will show up on a credit report, if it's as an arrangement that may harm your credit score. A payment holiday effectively moves some debt to your mortgage interest rate but for a longer term, so you'd later want to overpay on the mortgage so it's just cheaper short term borrowing, not long term.

nem39esis

Thanks everyone, the payment holiday is a good idea, that would chip off a sizeable debt and considering the mortgage rate is 2.5% would seam sensible so long as it doesnt have any impact on my credit file-ill enquire about this. Seams my best option is to really do a mixture of things and pay off as much as possible as quickly as possible.

nem39esis

well i left all this for a while and concentrated on trying to pay things off. today i went to nationwide and applied for a loan, their soft search quote was giving really great rates (7.8%) so i figured id see if that was likely. Turns out that although i may have a lot of debt i also have a great score, ive never missed payments and have a mortgage with nationwide too, so in their eyes im a great customer apparently and got offered a loan to pay off all my cards for 6.3%! so my advice to everyone would be to ask nationwide first. i think it helped i had a mortgage with them but theyre soft search really does indicate if youll get it or not. if the rate is low then youre very likely.

It should save me over £1500 a year and reduce my payments by £200 and pay it all off in 4 years. so in 4 years or sooner i will be debt free! (not including mortgage)

kittybangbang

nem39esis wrote: »

well i left all this for a while and concentrated on trying to pay things off. today i went to nationwide and applied for a loan, their soft search quote was giving really great rates (7.8%) so i figured id see if that was likely. Turns out that although i may have a lot of debt i also have a great score, ive never missed payments and have a mortgage with nationwide too, so in their eyes im a great customer apparently and got offered a loan to pay off all my cards for 6.3%! so my advice to everyone would be to ask nationwide first. i think it helped i had a mortgage with them but theyre soft search really does indicate if youll get it or not. if the rate is low then youre very likely.

It should save me over £1500 a year and reduce my payments by £200 and pay it all off in 4 years. so in 4 years or sooner i will be debt free! (not including mortgage)

That's good to hear now CUT UP THOSE CARDS!! :T