Credit card for newly self-employed

emcwill

Would be grateful if anyone can advise. My husband has fairly recently become self-employed after a long career in teaching. He is due to submit a tax return for 2014-15 but doesn't have the time to do it at the moment so as yet he has no verifiable income for a good few months since his teaching career ended.

In order to invest in his new business he is having to buy expensive equipment. At the moment he is using his personal credit card to do this. (He is a sole trader as opposed to a director of a ltd co. so we're not thinking he'd go down the company card route.) His card isn't a particularly competitive rate as we used to try to keep on top of it, but despite having recently zero'd it, it's crept back up to round £2k very quickly. We can't afford to clear it but are trying to chip away a little each month.

Our bank has offered him a more competitive card at 6.9% fixed for 3 years, but obviously if we could get a 0% whilst we try to juggle these big outgoings (which should become fewer over time) that would be better. Looking at the cards recommended on here, they all want income details and I think he'd fail at the first hurdle. Anyone recommend anything, or should we take the 6.9%?

Thanks in advance!

Nebulous2

It's hard to tell, without a great deal more detail, even then I amn't an underwriter! People without verifiable income often struggle to get credit and I'd say the 6.9% is pretty good.

I'd be more concerned about getting the business and business planning back on track. Does the 6.9% offer give enough headroom for the £2k to rise?

There's nothing to stop you taking the 6.9% as a fallback and then making another application for 0%. The soft search on here will give some idea of whether you are likely to be accepted.