money saving calculator

Tinatheteach

Hello everyone

help needed have been using the calculator for all our cc debts and a few of our cards seem to be giving funny readings???
its a Lloyds cc Balance: £3,870 Interest 26.94% apr the satement says: 2% and £5 the minimum they are taking is £93.94
Un yet when I put that in to the calculator all the way upto £115 say this is n ot enough to lower the balance?
It has been but only by about a £10 or so.:mad:

Many thanks
Great calculator

Tinatheteach

continuing from above post I have just noticed when I did put the higher amount in of £115 it also says the following:

The minimum payment level entered is too low, and wouldn't reduce your debt. For these results, we've upped it to 3%.

Making the minimum payment of:
The greater of 3% of balance or £5.

[Deleted User]

With the amount you owe, you are paying £86.68 per month interest. So a payment of £93.94 isn't going to make much of a dent in the balance.

Minimum payments aren't designed to reduce your balance and you don't want to be making them any more than is necessary.

I don't know what your credit record is like but if you've not been missing any payments then it might not be too bad. You should look into applying for a balance transfer card as soon as possible.

[Deleted User]

If you are unable to get a balance transfer card then you should focus on paying as much extra towards this credit card (or potentially another if you have a higher balance/interest rate) as you can each month.

Take a look at the barclaycard balance transfer cards. Last year one of my friends was accepted for this even though she had high outstanding debts.

geekonthepc

Yeah if you're credit rating is in good shape (check it with Noddle for free), I'd look into something like Barclaycard's BT offer. Even if they won't give you a limit high enough for the entire balance, you could at least BT as much as you can from the card to lower interest payments.

Otherwise, as aforementioned, you want to be paying off as much as you can per month to kill off that interest and lower the amount outstanding.

Tinatheteach

thanks Lazyloki
no body has offered me a transfer deal for ages I used to use them things have got really bad of late. credit rating was very good but i am sure it is starting to lower as most credit cards are at max capacity rather than someone else told me a while ago they should be about 75% to get a good deal.
I am worried about asking a new company incase they offer me one for a sill small amount and have an added credit search.
We have been thinking about an IVA quite seriously but just wondered if we could survive doing this instead (paying set amounts per month)

[Deleted User]

If your credit record isn't great a couple of searches aren't going to make much difference. So long as you haven't been missing payments then your record probably isn't that bad. What is the total credit card debt you have currently?

I would try applying for the barclaycard if I were you. You can transfer the debt from multiple cards (depending on the credit limit they offer you - you will put down how much you want to transfer during the application). It's worth a go. Bear in mind that they expect you to have debt, otherwise what's the point of a balance transfer card?

Barclaycard have several cards on offer just now ranging from 2.9% for 15 months (with no handling fee) to 0% for 25/27 months (2.04% or 2.98% handling fee respectively). If you have a significant debt then you're probably better off paying the slightly higher handling fee for a longer 0% offer but that really depends on your circumstances.

I would set your sights high and apply for the best card for you and apply to transfer most of your debt. That way, even if they don't give you exactly what you ask for they may offer something less rather than refuse to lend.

It would be silly not even to bother applying - just based on your Lloyds card, you'd be saving £86 a month. Using that debt as an example, if you were to move it to the 0% card for 25 months you would have cleared £2150 of the debt by paying the same £86/month as you currently are just covering the interest.

If you do apply, please let us know how you get on. Unfortunately many people ask for advice on the forums and never bother to let people know how it went - it means that we often don't know if the advice was any good!

Tinatheteach

Hi all thanks for the help I have checked our credit file mine is 3/5 and my husbands is 4/5
he only had one credit card available to him to apply for which unfortunately was a card he already has, so didnt get that. i am not even going to look seeing as mine is worse.
I can't apply for a barclaycard as I already have one which has a small balance on at 6.9% for life I did ask them today if I could transfer another balance on to it for 6.9% for life and they said not a problem so I now need to ask sweetly to get a credit increase, that will be a bit of help atleast!
I have 6 cards at £23,000 and my hubby has 6 cards at £27,000 all interest paying :-{ I have alot of working out to do pure headache

Tinatheteach

Hello everyone

Just wanted to let you know how things were going.
I didn't apply for anymore credit cards, I looked at the credit card calculator which I must say is an amazing tool but when we looked at the figures we simply couldn't afford to do that.
Our next step was to ring Step Change who were an amazing help and the first thing they have said to do is to find ourselves a new bank to open accounts with and that are not associated with any of our creditors which is a bit of a pain as other wise they can nick money from our bank accounts to pay debts. Then we are going to pay all our creditors £1 per month.

My new question is where do I find a list of associated banks and credit card companies i.e. (I have a tesco credit card and the statement says "HSBC" collection bank) so presumably if I had a HSBC bank account they could get at my money?
Tina