Balance Transfer Questions

Chris14

I have two credit cards, one Virgin with just under £2,000 and one HSBC with £5,000 on. Each month I pay the minimum balance allowable,£50 on the Virgin and £120 on HSBC and then at the end of the month I'm still struggling to get by and usually end up putting more money on my cards if I'm short. I really need to balance transfer them as I'm not making any headway but I'm reluctant to apply for new cards in case I'm refused as I don't want it to negatively affect my credit rating.

I bring in a salary of £25,000 per annum and I've just finished paying for some furniture which will grant me another £40 per month to potentially put towards my debts. So, my question is would one of the better credit card offers like Barclaycard or Tesco take a £7,000 balance transfer or would I have to split the debt between two cards?

Thanks in advance for your help!

tink_1983

When I took out my tesco 0% they only offered me £2.5 balance
Which I think is standard for new customers.

I see no reason not to apply for two at once & hope they both get accepted. Can only transfer up to 95% of ur new card balance due to transfer fee etc.

tink_1983

When I took out my Barclaycard it was £3k balance.
You may get offered more though :-)

sivs

I normally get a credit limit of about 6K + when I first open the account, however I earn over 30K

You will have to be earning more than 25K for these kind of limits. I would apply for one card first and if successful apply for another straight after, then your previous search won't be on your credit report as it's not instant.

sfax

Applying only negatively affects your credit rating in the short term. It's advisable to keep to a maximum of three searches over a 6 month period. The only way you'll find out for sure is to apply but I would echo what other people have said and guess you would need at least 2 cards to get £7,000. For reference my BT Tesco card's limit is £6,500 but I have quite a strong credit rating

bigadaj

If you earn £25000 then your limit for unsecured credit is likely to be around £12500, so need to apply fro a single card which you might get a limit of up to £5500 given your existing credit. You could then theoretically move nearly £5000 onto the new card assuming you get a zero or low interest rate.

Whether you do this or not you need to throw as much money as you can at he higher interest card, which will then reduce the balance, consequentially payments and make a dent in the debt.