Please help me with advice re £26,000 debt on 4 UK credit cards.

Linden123

My friend owes
MBNA £6000 interest = £51 this month
Barclays mastercard £5300 = 0% until April 2105 then 28%
Barclays Visa £7400 = £94 interest this month
HSBC £4300 = £50 interest this month

I keep telling her to contact these banks and make an arrangement to reduce the debt. I used to work for banks in Australia and they all have the ability to help people suffering from financial hardship eg by freezing interest or agreeing to a final payment amount if paid all at once.

She has paid off other cards but still keeps them active. I keep telling her to call the banks with those cards and cancel them but she won't.

I've been trying to get her to go to the citizens advice bureau and find out her legal rights regarding debt in UK. Find out about bankruptcy etc but she won't do that either..

Failing any of the above, can anyone offer advice?

InsideInsurance

Contact a debt charity, personally I think there are better ones that CAB - eg StepChange

Generally UK lenders wont actually freeze interest/ offer a reduced settlement figure whilst the minimum payments are being made each month.

What is her actual issue? Having a lot of debt is not automatically a problem and you say she's already paid off other cards so doesnt sound as if she's lost her job 6 months ago or such. Indeed an associate just bought a new ferrari on credit so has circa £200,000 of car loan but the interest rate was lower than his return on investments so the cheaper way to do it and he certainly wouldnt be considering bankruptcy any time soon.

chrisw99

Open some more credit cards with 0% balance transfer deals and get it shifted? I had a similar amount of debt across 4 credit cards, now have it on 7 different cards, all at 0% apart from my daily usage card, so I pay hardly any interest really (compared to £200 a month in the OP!)

Quimoi

It seems that your friend either doesn't want or doesn't need advice on her debts. Are they causing problems for her or are you just worried they are quite a lot?

In either case she's an adult and can do as she pleases - I'm not sure what anyone could offer until she does want or need help.

CLAPTON

without knowing her income and expenses, it all makes no sense

Linden123

Quimoi wrote: »

It seems that your friend either doesn't want or doesn't need advice on her debts. Are they causing problems for her or are you just worried they are quite a lot?

In either case she's an adult and can do as she pleases - I'm not sure what anyone could offer until she does want or need help.

The second part is certainly true.

she's been asking for my advice and talking to me about the debt for years now. Someone else recommended moneysavingexpert and she asked me to post a thread on here since English isn't her first language

Voyager2002

Linden123 wrote: »

The second part is certainly true.

she's been asking for my advice and talking to me about the debt for years now. Someone else recommended moneysavingexpert and she asked me to post a thread on here since English isn't her first language

I hope that you will show her this thread...

Note that if she makes an arrangement or freezes the interest then her credit record will be marked, and further borrowing will be difficult or impossible for the next few years. If she is employed and is coping then balance transfers to interest-free cards would be a good way forwards...

grumbler

With £26K credit used (and even more available) a BT is certainly not an option unless she earns £100K.

chattychappy

grumbler wrote: »

With £26K credit used (and even more available) a BT is certainly not an option unless she earns £100K.

3 or 4 years ago I had over £40K on CCs and could still get new BT cards despite earning less than £100K. No late payments and always paid more than minimums. Kept the plates spinning for quite some time that way - before paying the debt down.

chrisw99

grumbler wrote: »

With £26K credit used (and even more available) a BT is certainly not an option unless she earns £100K.

Why not? I have a similar amount across 6 cards and I just opened at Tesco one and got a £5100 credit limit on it. And I don't earn 100k. I don't even earn 50k to be honest.