Shift all debts to 0%?

Broke_Kitty

My current situation is outlined in my signature in quite a bit of detail

Looked into getting another money transfer credit card at 0%, and I'm eligable for one (soft search), but after snowballing, it would only cut off 2 months from my DFD! It would save me £450 in interest, so it is tempting.

The interest on my loan is presently 22.8%, where as the interest on the card would be 20.9% after the offer ends (obviously I would pay it off by then anyway) so even if for some terrible reason I didn't manage to pay it off by the end of the offer I wouldn't actually be losing anything...

Literally the only thing holding me back is I'm worried that getting credit cards too soon after each other will be bad for my rating (I last applied for and was accepted for cards in November).

Appreciate any advice, thanks

Tixy

Literally the only thing holding me back is I'm worried that getting credit cards too soon after each other will be bad for my rating (I last applied for and was accepted for cards in November).

Are you expecting to need to apply for anything else very soon (next couple of months)? If not I'd give it a shot. £450 is £450 after all!

somethingcorporate

Unless you expect to need any additional credit in the near future then go for it!

Broke_Kitty

Tixy wrote: »

Are you expecting to need to apply for anything else very soon (next couple of months)? If not I'd give it a shot. £450 is £450 after all!

somethingcorporate wrote: »

Unless you expect to need any additional credit in the near future then go for it!

No plans for about 6 months, if at all. What is the usual time frame to wait before going for credit? My only reason for applying for credit at all right now is to shift things and pay no interest, but you just have to hope nothing comes up don't you!

I think if I knew everything was on 0%, I would set my payments to what the snowball says and then build up my emergency fund some more to hopefully avoid needing credit for any nasty surprises. 50% of my wage currently does and still would go towards debt payment, the rest is bills and living costs, and any extra money I find/make/win goes straight to overpayments.

So for example this offer is for 20 months, and the snowball says that based on what I'm paying now I would be done in exactly 20 months if I switched to 0%, which is perfect, but any EXTRA (ebay, surveys etc) I would put in my emergency fund in case anything came up. If my emergency fund somehow got beyond the realms of a safety buffer I would throw it at the cards in order to bring that time down.

Broke_Kitty

Oh I forgot, the one thing I wanted to check - this card is an MBNA platinum, and at least one of my cards is definitely MBNA too (I believe Barclaycard is MBNA?) and I think my Barclaycard limit is something stupid like £7k of which I am only using like £2600, but I know available credit is something they would look at isn't it?

Am I likely to be declined on those grounds?

Tixy

It is sometimes recommended not to make more than 3 applications in a 6month period.

The possible 'risk' comes if you plan to apply for credit soon and your debt looks higher than it is (i.e. the new credit card has appeared but the old loan doesn't yet show as settled). But if you don't need knew credit in the next couple of months then this will all have sorted on your credit files by then.

As an aside presumably as its a loan you are planning to pay off you are going to try to get a card offering 0% on money transfers. I notice in your signature you already have a virgin card - what is the limit on that? if you have sufficient limit have you checked if they are offering you any new 0% deals so you could put the debt on there?

Tixy

No barclaycard is not MBNA.
Virgin might be - it used to be but then I think they sold most credit card accounts off. Can't quite recollect at the moment exactly what happened.

Broke_Kitty

Tixy wrote: »

It is sometimes recommended not to make more than 3 applications in a 6month period.

The possible 'risk' comes if you plan to apply for credit soon and your debt looks higher than it is (i.e. the new credit card has appeared but the old loan doesn't yet show as settled). But if you don't need knew credit in the next couple of months then this will all have sorted on your credit files by then.

As an aside presumably as its a loan you are planning to pay off you are going to try to get a card offering 0% on money transfers. I notice in your signature you already have a virgin card - what is the limit on that? if you have sufficient limit have you checked if they are offering you any new 0% deals so you could put the debt on there?

This was actually what got me thinking about this, I took the virgin and barclaycards out in November, at the same time. The Barclaycard is 0% on balance transfers for 30 months (from November) and I used this to transfer an old Lloyds CC and an old M&S CC to pay them off at 0%. The Virgin card was 0% on money transfers for 26 months (from November) and I took it out to pay off my Lloyds loan, a small Hitachi Capital loan, and my overdraft. Unfortunately the credit limit they gave me was a couple of grand shy of what I needed, thus still having part of my Lloyds loan.

I thought that was that, but the other day I thought 'hey, it says transfers made within 60 days on both cards and I have a whopping great big credit limit on my Barclaycard - why the heck did I not just immediately transfer the Virgin balance onto the Barclaycard, and transfer more money off the Virgin card to completely take care of the Lloyds loan?'.

Obviously by the time I realised this, it was too late and the offers have expired.

Tixy wrote: »

No barclaycard is not MBNA.
Virgin might be - it used to be but then I think they sold most credit card accounts off. Can't quite recollect at the moment exactly what happened.

Ah yes you are right - the Virgin money site says MBNA at the bottom of the page. I knew it was one of them!

Scritti

You can easily login to the Barclaycard website and reduce your credit limit down to whatever it is that you're currently using.

I've reduced mine from 10.5k to 3.5k and reduce it every time I pay off another £500.

I believe this will help if and when I want to apply for a different 0% card if I don't pay it all off before the 0% period ends.

Broke_Kitty

Scritti wrote: »

You can easily login to the Barclaycard website and reduce your credit limit down to whatever it is that you're currently using.

I've reduced mine from 10.5k to 3.5k and reduce it every time I pay off another £500.

I believe this will help if and when I want to apply for a different 0% card if I don't pay it all off before the 0% period ends.

Thank you very much for this - hadn't realised I could do this! I assume it takes a while to update on your credit file?

Broke_Kitty

Also, I think that if I just pay off MOST of the loan - ie leave £80 or so, I wouldn't have to pay a settlement fee, and the rest would just go out as a direct debit the following month/end of this month.