Big payment coming up. Chance for balance transfer abuse?

stelisevil

Hi there,

In September I'll be coming to the end of 3 year 0% deal on a car I purchased on PCP. I've chosen to pay the final payment of ~£4100.

My situation:
Halifax Credit Card: Credit limit: £8400. Balance: £5000 (£4000 @ 0% interest | £1000 @ 20.5% interest). Balance transfer offer of 18 months @ 0% and 3% fee.
Santander Credit Card: Credit limit: £1900. Balance: £-600 (yep, negative)
£1300 cash.

Irritatingly, the final payment for the car must be made in one transaction and cannot be spread across multiple cards.

The first plan I had was to simply use the £1300 cash I have to pay off my Halifax card (and clearing the remaining £1000 I am currently paying interest on in the process) and using that card to purchase the car. I would be paying around £70 interest per month on the £4100 car purchase as I don't have a 0% purchases offer.

Then I got thinking, and wondered if it was possible to make a balance transfer of say £3000 from the Santander Card to the Halifax Card, bringing the balance of the Santander Card to £-3600, and using that card to purchase the car. I would then use £1000 of the £1300 cash to pay off the remaining non-0% balance on my Halifax card, and the remaining £300 cash would be paid off my Santander Card's new balance of £500 post car purchase. I would then pay the remaining £200 off my Santander card the following month and not be charged any interest as I always clear that card in full every month.

Sorry if that sounds like a lot of waffle! What I guess I am asking is does this look feasible? Is it even possible to make a credit card go so much into the negative? Does my maths look ok or is there a better combination of payments/balance transfers?

Many thanks in advance for any advice!

eskbanker

If by a negative CC balance you mean that it's in credit then this is usually against the Ts & Cs (check the Santander ones) and so should generally be avoided - you may get away with it but why take the risk? If you're already £600 in credit (inadvertently?) then deliberately going significantly further into credit on that card wouldn't be a good idea in my humble opinion....

Candyapple

I agree with the poster above.

Why not, use £1k cash from the £1.3k you have saved, and pay off the £1k balance accruing interest on Halifax card, that way you would have £4.4k available credit to spend with the other £4k still on 0% deal.

Apply for a new 0% balance transfer card (I would suggest Barclays or MBNA as both give generous limits and also both offer 3 years interest free). Use the £4.4k on your Halifax card to purchase the car and then with the new card from either Barclaycard or MBNA, balance transfer the amount you want onto it so that way your £4k 0% deal at Halifax remains intact and you could spread the cost of the £4.1k purchase over 3 years.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/balance-transfer-credit-cards?&_ga=1.123020354.818124683.1438163777#barclaycard28

stelisevil

That's brilliant, thanks for the help!