Credit Card BT Advice

Faselei

Hello all!

Just looking for a bit of advice re balance transfers.


Bit of background, at my worst point, around 2008/9 I was about £24k in debt (loans/credit cards) plus student loan and salary was just a tad higher at the time, so as you can imagine access to credit was completely withdrawn post crunch, I even tried applying for a £19.5k consol loan at one point!


Anyway fingers crossed those days won't return in a hurry, but I've still got a long way to go, current situation:


4 Cards


Provider / Current Balance / Rate / Limit


HSBC / £1.6k / 19.9% / £10k
NWest / £6k / 22.9% and 0% / £6.6k
Tesco / £3.2k / 0% / £3.5k
lloyds / £3.1k / 0% / £3.25k


Total / £13.9k / xx / £23.35k


Sal £46k basic including £3k car allowance, so would be less if I took the car option but I take it it's okay to class as basic when applying for credit?


The Tesco and Lloyds cards are zero for a good while yet (12 months plus) but about £4.5k of the Nwest is about to go from zero to 22.9% and the HSBC card is 19.9%.


So obviously the desired outcome is as much as possible on zero interest, Nwest seem happy to do 6 months interest free at any time but the space is with HSBC and they won't offer me any CBTs, asked a while back, so I guess they're hoping I just go nuts and blow £8k on something.


I completed a Nationwide soft search, returned 19.9% / 2.5k limit, about 24 months interest free so might have gone through okay, but didn't apply at the time. Then tried again and the limit was down to £1k so again gave it a miss as I really don't want five cards outstanding.


I use the free noddle service, I know it's relatively meaningless but the out of five score recently dropped from 3 to 2/5 so there's obviously something the formula doesn't like.


Worst marker is an 'Early Arrears' in 2009, fairly certain I went passed my overdraft limit 2 months in a row. Also I've been renting so I've had 5 addresses in about 8 years, 2 at current.


The Plan:


If anyone can recommend an alternative please do so!


It looks like I'm at my application limit, based on my available credit being very close to 50% of basic, with that in mind my rough plan is to clear the slightly cheaper HSBC debt and close the account, but ask them one more time for a CBT.


This might be possible quicker if I can get a new lender on board. Even though the Nwest debt is more expensive it'll just mean I'll have four, rather than five cards if I can get a new offer.


Then overpay Nwest and see what offers arrive through the post with current providers. I've set up smallish SOs so I'll always pay min plus a bit on all cards.


Thanks for reading!