Halifax Clarity Travel Card - How much interest?

broonie30

Hi everyone. I'm planning a trip around South America for 4 months and I'm looking for a bit of help with how I can access money while on the road and hopefully you can help.

I want to stay away from prepaid cards as I'm unsure how well they will be accepted by ATMs in Peru & Bolivia. I know that Visa and Matercard should be fine so I'm looking at the Halifax Clarity Credit card. It has 0% load and no transaction fee for ATM withdrawals. However they will charge interest at 12.9% (or up to 21.9% if I don't get the best rate).

Can someone help and advise me if this would be a good card to use for withdrawals considering how easy I want to be able to access money. How much interest would I be likely to incurr if I spent say £3000 over 4 months and got the worst rate 21.9%.

Thank you all so much in advance for any help and advice!

lisyloo

How much interest would I be likely to incurr if I spent say £3000 over 4 months and got the worst rate 21.9%.

Are you really struggling with the maths here?
If the rate is 21.9% for a year, then for 4 months out of 12 you'll have to pay 4/12ths of 21.9%. That's 7.4%.

bigadaj

You would also need to make monthly payments, which might only be the minimum but if you took money out and made no payment on that month's payment then you would be in default and incur penalties.

As you would have to make monthly payments you should try and pay for each set of withdrawals within a couple of weeks, as this would minimise interest.

guesswho2000

lisyloo wrote: »

Are you really struggling with the maths here?
If the rate is 21.9% for a year, then for 4 months out of 12 you'll have to pay 4/12ths of 21.9%. That's 7.4%.

Or...as 4 month is 1/3 of a year, and op wants £3000, 1/3 of that = £1000, so 21.9% or 1/3 - £219. Assuming OP spent the £3000 on day one.

If it was £3000 averaged over the 4 months, assume half that, so about £109.50.

This doesn't take into account payments made etc, it's likely to be a lot less with timely payments to the account.

lisyloo

Payments to the account will of course make a massive difference.
If you have access to a secure computer then making payments on-line can reduce the interest almost to zero.
I wouldn't recommend putting banking details into a shared computer in an internet cafe or hotel, but most people would be prepared to use their personal ipad/laptop on wifi.

BTW - you should make payments with BACs from your own online banking. Halifax will not let you pay a balance until you have a statement balabnce, so if you start at zero then you have to wait until your statement is created.