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0% card or Student loan?

TheGardener
Posts: 3,303 Forumite


Hi
Daughter currently works fulltime on low-ish salary approx. £15K pa. gross. She wants to go back to Uni 1 day per week to get quals that will increase her salary but in order to do this she will have to reduce hours to 4 day week and will lose 20% of salary.
Has a current debt of £3.5K on a 0% card and is paying at £500pm off with no further expenditure on the card. Despite income she had an excellent CR as very good at managing her money.
She will have to pay £2.2K in Sept in tuition fees. So the question is:
Should she carry on paying off the current CC at 0% (so it will be clear by Sept) and then pay tuition with a CC and then do a BT to a 0% or - should she save for the tuition fees and just make minimum payments to current CC...she is eligible for a student loan (she already has one from a few years ago but has switched careers) but that carries an interest rate.
Daughter currently works fulltime on low-ish salary approx. £15K pa. gross. She wants to go back to Uni 1 day per week to get quals that will increase her salary but in order to do this she will have to reduce hours to 4 day week and will lose 20% of salary.
Has a current debt of £3.5K on a 0% card and is paying at £500pm off with no further expenditure on the card. Despite income she had an excellent CR as very good at managing her money.
She will have to pay £2.2K in Sept in tuition fees. So the question is:
Should she carry on paying off the current CC at 0% (so it will be clear by Sept) and then pay tuition with a CC and then do a BT to a 0% or - should she save for the tuition fees and just make minimum payments to current CC...she is eligible for a student loan (she already has one from a few years ago but has switched careers) but that carries an interest rate.
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Comments
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TheGardener wrote: »She will have to pay £2.2K in Sept in tuition fees. So the question is:
Should she carry on paying off the current CC at 0% (so it will be clear by Sept) and then pay tuition with a CC and then do a BT to a 0% or - should she save for the tuition fees and just make minimum payments to current CC...
Generally, what's the point in paying off one 0% deal early only to take another 0% deal and pay BT fees?0 -
If she was excellent at managing her money she would not have credit card debt and would have saved the tuition fees - apart from that dad is right!0
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jonesMUFCforever wrote: »If she was excellent at managing her money she would not have credit card debt and would have saved the tuition fees - apart from that dad is right!
The CC debt was from buying a small car for work - once the car loan was set up she BT'ed the car loan onto a 0% card with a v.low transfer fee. The 0% period ends in September. On her salary she couldn't have saved up for a car fast enough and now has a car on a loan with no interest - I can't see how that was a completely bad move myself nor that it makes her bad at managing money?
I had forgotten about the BT fees and I have encouraged her to use the student loan system - if she lost her job the SU wouldn't be a problem - the CC debt would be0 -
What happens in September if she can't get a new balance transfer to pay the card off?0
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She gets a new 0% first, then uses another card to pay the fees (or the new card if 0% is on purchases). Otherwise she uses a student loan that, I think, she can apply for in advance.0
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jonesMUFCforever wrote: »What happens in September if she can't get a new balance transfer to pay the card off?
Well that's exactly what I said to her - as she works in local authority - I'm more concerned about her still having a job. If she goes with the student loan Co at least it spares her the panic of not being able to make the CC payments. The 0% card was just an idea and I though I would sound out the collective brains on here to see if it was a viable option.0
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