Student with a BarclayCard, interest never ending?

MrJester

Hi there.

I'm a student in my final year of study (about to go into), I took out a Barclaycard last year whilst I had a part time job, I was earning well as it was well paid for the hours I did, reasonably anyway.
I got the card to help my credit rating, honest!, I was working and just put a few purchases onto it to then pay off, and it was working fine. Then I lost my job last August, and have not been working since, the only income I get is from Student Finance.

I currently have a credit limit of £1,200 on my barclaycard, and I am currently at £1,188. My monthly payments to them at the moment range from £25-30. The main issue is that whilst I pay this, each month they add on interest around about the same amount, so I am in a cycle of not actually paying off any of the debt of it because they just keep adding it back on.

In my circumstance, what chance do I have in getting them to stop the interest, what's the best way to go about it? In a perfect world if they stopped adding interest back on I would pay the same amount each month and slowly wittle away at it, and hopefully when I'm doing OK for money again be able to pay off bigger chunks when I can.

With virtually no income, surely I cannot be expected to keep paying like this!

Any advice would be massively appreciated!

spacey2012

You will have to cut out any socialising, cut down to food and lodgings and make bulk payments to clear the debt along with your monthly payments.

jacques_chirac

No chance of them freezing the interest unless you default, and that will wreck your credit file. Whatever you do, make sure you stay within your limit, taking account for any prevailing interest - your charges will spiral if you go over.

MrJester

Thanks for your words. So is there not any chance of me asking them to lower interest, freeze it for a short time or anything? I will try get bulks together to pay it off.

Out of interest, is it helping my credit rating to be paying for the card like I am now? I feel like it's a bad debt, but in terms of my credit rating is it helping it? I think I went over £1200 once, but quickly corrected it.

Thanks

opinions4u

If they agree lower payments it will negatively impact your credit rating.

If you go over the limit it will negatively impact your credit rating.

If you are only paying minimum payment this will be reported by the CRA and could be interpreted negatively.

If you pay more than the minimum it will look positive.

Welcome to the grown up world of debt. Interest gets charged. Debt takes longer to reduce if you pay as little as possible.

[Deleted User]

How about seeing if there's a card that you could transfer the balance to, with a lower interest rate? You might have a reasonable chance with some of them, given that you've been building up a history with Barclaycard.

Maybe try the pre-application checker at https://creditcards.moneysavingexpert.com/ to see which Balance Transfer cards might work for you.

Maestro.

billbennett wrote: »

You might have a reasonable chance with some of them

Without a job it's unlikely.