confused of alnwick!

JennyHennyPenny

I owe 9,876.60 to Barclays for career development. I pay 12.9% apr. Should I get a credit card with a low apr and pay it all off and cut the card up and pay it off monthly if I can or should I get a personal loan with the same apr? I'm confused about what to do or who will give me the best deal.

Longpockets

JHP,
I would suggest you start with the following:

1. Since it takes a number of weeks to arrange a new credit card you should initially ring up Barclaycard and see if they have any offers on at the moment for lower interest rates, life of balance rates etc. and take up that offer.

2. If you have any other credit cards see if they have lower offers, if they do then Balance transfer (BT) your debt with Barclaycard to them, there will probably be a fee attached to doing this say 2% (max £50). If they don't have any better offers on then, apart from if the card is Egg (see this site regarding eggs anniversary offer), I would suggest cancelling them to reduce your total available credit figure in your credit file held by experian and equifax.

3. Apply for a new card that has 0% balance transfer (BT) offer, this will typically be for 9 months. A good card to look at is Egg as it doesn't charge a fee for carrying out a BT. Another is Capital 1 as they say that they will try and match your existing credit card limit, although there is a 2% (max £50) fee for carrying out the BT. Then transfer your Barclaycard debt to the new card.

All of the above can be found on this site so it's worth having a good look around to get a feel for the subject and I'm others will add to this post.

Best of luck.

Rafter

Jenny,

I presume you have a loan with Barclays at 12.9% APR at present rather than a Barclaycard Debt.

12.9% is not that competitive but it depends on your circumstances (income and credit rating) as to whether you can beat it.

Although the lowest APRs are on 0% credit cards, the advantage of a loan is that the APR is fixed for the lifetime of the loan and you won't have to keep shuffling the debt from credit card to credit card as the 0% offers expire.

I'd suggest you try applying for a texaco card which has a 3.9% APR for the life of balance transfers. Just make sure you don't use it for purchases.

You probably won't get the £10k you need to repay Barclays though so you may need to find other cards or a cheap personal loan to cover the balance.

It may also be worth talking to Barclays and seeing if they will reduce your APR.

You may also have to pay some sort of penalty for repaying the loan early, although I think Barclays are one of the few providers who don't levy these charges.

Good luck.

R.