First Credit Card Help! Balance Transfer/Purchases

ProfessorCrabb

Hello there!

My financial situation will soon require an application for a credit card but I am a bit unsure of how to go about it. My situation is thus:

I have finance on a laptop I purchased last year with the final payment (before it skyrockets) mid March for approx £800.
My car is also due MOT, TAX and Insurance totalling approx £700 to be paid from the beginning of March.

There is little chance that I'll be able to pay this off in a lump sum and would like to avoid paying the optional monthly repayments offered by Gov (on tax) and insurance companies(to avoid the additional cost).

I'm unsure of whether to apply for a 0% purchase card for x months or a 0% balance transfer card. I am able to pay the total borrowed (around £1500) within a year. I have no other debts, am in full-time employment and earn around £21K a year.

Any help wouldbe much appreciated!

Best

CLAPTON

ProfessorCrabb wrote: »

Hello there!

My financial situation will soon require an application for a credit card but I am a bit unsure of how to go about it. My situation is thus:

I have finance on a laptop I purchased last year with the final payment (before it skyrockets) mid March for approx £800.
My car is also due MOT, TAX and Insurance totalling approx £700 to be paid from the beginning of March.

There is little chance that I'll be able to pay this off in a lump sum and would like to avoid paying the optional monthly repayments offered by Gov (on tax) and insurance companies(to avoid the additional cost).

I'm unsure of whether to apply for a 0% purchase card for x months or a 0% balance transfer card. I am able to pay the total borrowed (around £1500) within a year. I have no other debts, am in full-time employment and earn around £21K a year.

Any help wouldbe much appreciated!

Best

if you currently have no credit cards the it may be difficult to get one with special incentives like 0% pruchase or BT as these usually require you to already have a proven track record of maintaining a CC

unless you already have a CC with a debt then getting a BT card will be useless, unless it's a 'superbalance transfer card' that allows money transfer to your bank account. (e.g. MBNA stable of cards)

you may wish to see that your current bank offers in the way of cards as they know how you look after your bank a/c.

dresdendave

Please don't take this the wrong way OP, is isn't intended to be nasty or judgemental.


You say you can pay off £1500 in a year no problem. That suggests you have a spare £125 each month. Can you not use this saved money to pay for these items that are all routine payments you should have budgeted for?


If you haven't been saving £125 per month then how are you going to repay the CC?


Please do your sums before going down this route and the car expenses will be required again in 12 months time, will you need to load them on the CC again?


As I said at the start of my post I'm not trying to have a go at you, just making you aware of the possible pitfalls of using a card this way. There are many posts on this site from people who "know they can easily pay the card off" only to be back a year later with the card maxed out and struggling to pay the minimum payment.