Please please help

CAZZIE1234

Hello, please please please can someone give me some urgent advice. My son has an Alliance and Leicester credit card with an extremly high interest rate. (He also banks with them) The card limit is 6300 and he owes 5300, the minimum payment per month is for typically 108 pounds, of which they charge him 102 pounds in interest, so he only paying 6 pounds per month off the balance.He never uses the card, has a good credit rating, and always pays all his bills on time. He cannot afford to pay any more than the minimum payment, but I am unable to find him a balance transfer card that is not part of the MBNA group, which his Alliance and Leister card is. I am sick of trawling through credit card applications with him online only to find on the final page that you cannot transfer one MBNA balance to another. I am desperate to help him to find a solution, as he is becoming more and more depressed about this issue. It is soul destroying as I am sure you will apprciate when he works full time, pays in excess of 1296 pounds per year to these shysters, and less than 100 per year actually comes off his balance. We have tried talking to Alliance and Leicester who were as ever extremly unsympathetic. I am hoping against hope that one or more of you lovely people can give us some advice to find a solution to this crisis. I would pay it for him myself if I could but my finances dont stretch that far.
Sorry for rambling on, any suggestions very much apprciated

jonnyb

load of other 0% cards out there he could apply for.
check out https://www.moneysupermarket.com for a comparison site - one of the longest is a speacial deal for the halifax one card at 0% for 12 months.

or worst case, get a small loan to pay thw card balance, probably with a much smaller interest rate - but make sure he does not run the card balance up once it is clear.

vandanfc

Have you had a look at Martin's article:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1107182516,76509,

M & S Life of balance card is suggested, now owned by HSBC so okay ???

CLAPTON

in all honesty, if he is struggling to pay the minimum off each month then you should encourage him to look at his income and spending to see if he can't free up a bit extra to pay the debt of more quickly.
I would suggest that he posts on the debt free wannabe board with details of his income, spending and the debt and see if people there can help.

mountainofdebt

CAZZIE1234 wrote: »

Hello, please please please can someone give me some urgent advice. My son has an Alliance and Leicester credit card with an extremly high interest rate. (He also banks with them) The card limit is 6300 and he owes 5300, the minimum payment per month is for typically 108 pounds, of which they charge him 102 pounds in interest, so he only paying 6 pounds per month off the balance.He never uses the card, has a good credit rating, and always pays all his bills on time. He cannot afford to pay any more than the minimum payment, but I am unable to find him a balance transfer card that is not part of the MBNA group, which his Alliance and Leister card is. I am sick of trawling through credit card applications with him online only to find on the final page that you cannot transfer one MBNA balance to another. I am desperate to help him to find a solution, as he is becoming more and more depressed about this issue. It is soul destroying as I am sure you will apprciate when he works full time, pays in excess of 1296 pounds per year to these shysters, and less than 100 per year actually comes off his balance. We have tried talking to Alliance and Leicester who were as ever extremly unsympathetic. I am hoping against hope that one or more of you lovely people can give us some advice to find a solution to this crisis. I would pay it for him myself if I could but my finances dont stretch that far.
Sorry for rambling on, any suggestions very much apprciated

Firstly please don't think I'm getting at you but your son has spent on the card, he knew the interest rate (even if he didn't appreciate what it meant in £s) and it might be a good thing in the long run if he has learnt a valuable lesson....so as you can guess I wouldn't advocate you paying it off - what lesson would that teach him?

That said, I endorse what Clapton has said -get your son to post on the debt free wanabee board - lots of advice on there for cutting back. However, I would stress that unless your son has seen the light and is prepared to make cut backs (so he can make more than the minimum payment) you are fighting a losing battle.

YorkshireBoy

vandanfc wrote: »

M & S Life of balance card is suggested, now owned by HSBC so okay ???

At 3%, the minimum payments might be out of reach at £159 per month.

OP's son will have to find a card with 2% minimum payments to maintain the current repayment at just over £100.

There's a list of 0% BT cards in this table, and their respective minimum payment percentages are shown alongside each product.

To avoid applying for other MBNA run cards, check out the who owns who table on the stoozing site.

jamalfatty

Why not try another MBNA card, BT the amount into his current account, use the cash to pay off the A&L card and then close it?

mountainofdebt

for the simple reason is that they would only be asking as a minimum payment £5 and this could lure the OP's son into a false sense of wealth.

If the OP's son can't get another card then he is going to have to increase his payment and literally throw every spare penny at it, ignoring the mimimum payment amount.

To do this, he's going to have to either earn more (get a bar job perphaps?) or decrease his spending - or preferably both.

Although having thought about it, it might be an idea to adopt this approach even if he can get another card!

CAZZIE1234

mountainofdebt wrote: »

Firstly please don't think I'm getting at you but your son has spent on the card, he knew the interest rate (even if he didn't appreciate what it meant in £s) and it might be a good thing in the long run if he has learnt a valuable lesson....so as you can guess I wouldn't advocate you paying it off - what lesson would that teach him?

That said, I endorse what Clapton has said -get your son to post on the debt free wanabee board - lots of advice on there for cutting back. However, I would stress that unless your son has seen the light and is prepared to make cut backs (so he can make more than the minimum payment) you are fighting a losing battle.

If you had read my original question you would not have taken this attitude. I said I could NOT pay it off, and that he does NOT use the card, you seem to have read the complete opposite. You also seem to be judging him for having the debt in the first instance, without knowing the dreadful circumstances we were all involved in at the time, when he used this money in order to help not squander.
He works 72 hours a week as a security officer, so pray tell how he is supposed to work harder -earn more.
Therefore your reply was not what we needed to hear.

mountainofdebt

I am sorry if my reply offended you BUT your original post did not include details of why the expenditure was made on the card, how long your son works or if he had stopped spending on the card....... All that was mentioned was how horrible A&L were.

If he can get another card anywhere else - and even if they won't let him make a full balance transfer - I would take it; getting even a small percentage of the debt onto 0% is better than nothing.

Can he Ebay anything? You'd be surprised how you can crack a debt by chipping away at it.

EagerLearner

YorkshireBoy wrote: »

At 3%, the minimum payments might be out of reach at £159 per month.

OP's son will have to find a card with 2% minimum payments to maintain the current repayment at just over £100.

There's a list of 0% BT cards in this table, and their respective minimum payment percentages are shown alongside each product.

To avoid applying for other MBNA run cards, check out the who owns who table on the stoozing site.

This is a great info and will allow you to see who owns what credit card - also have you typed 'free credit report' on google - you can access credit report sites that by just putting in your sons postcode and a few details, it will only show you lists of companies that will probably accept him as a customer. This saves applying for things that he may get refused on.