Stoozing: Make Free Cash from Credit Cards article discussion

Former_MSE_Dan

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Stoozing: Make Free Cash from Credit Cards article

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comdw

The calculator could do with a 'balance transfer fee' box as so many 0% deals have a transfer fee which reduces the amount you earn stoozing by quite a bit.

Lugh_Chronain

Amount Stoozed: is that your present balance on your bill?

Credit Card Interest Rate: if you card is 0% for x amount of should you enter it here?

How long for?: is that how long you’ve had the card for or how long the 0% interest offer is for?

Pre Tax: is before tax is deducted so if you’re with A&L for example it should be 6.5% correct.

Former_MSE_Dan

1) Correct - easiest to think of this as the amount of stoozed debt you currently have in savings accounts

2) + 3) The How Long is the period over which you want to work out your profits. So, if you have a 0% card for 9 months, you either enter 0% and 9 months, or if you intend toswitch to other 0% cards once the first one runs out, enter however long you intend to keep stoozing for in the "How Long?" box.

4) Correct, enter the interest rate at which the account is advertised - we take of the correct amount of tax for you

Lugh_Chronain

Just to verify, if my present amount of stoozed money is say £500, after use of only three months, Savings Account Pre-Tax Interest Rate is as mentioned 6.5% and my Credit Card Interest Rate is 0% for 12 months would that mean I've saved £26. This is just an example by the way.

Or would it be better to wait till the end of the 0% offer to get a real idea of how much I've saved.

hatty95

Has anyone had a go at this yet? Are you sure that you can transfer money from your egg card to your current account? I tried to apply for the card but it just looked like you could transfer money into your egg current account.....

Ben1982

hatty95 wrote: »

Has anyone had a go at this yet? Are you sure that you can transfer money from your egg card to your current account? I tried to apply for the card but it just looked like you could transfer money into your egg current account.....

Needs to be Egg Money, but yes you can, I called up today to transfer my +ve balance to my current account, no issues, they said it takes up to 7 working days. 2nd time I've done it this year

Former_MSE_Dan

Lugh_Chronain wrote: »

Just to verify, if my present amount of stoozed money is say £500, after use of only three months, Savings Account Pre-Tax Interest Rate is as mentioned 6.5% and my Credit Card Interest Rate is 0% for 12 months would that mean I've saved £26. This is just an example by the way.

Or would it be better to wait till the end of the 0% offer to get a real idea of how much I've saved.

Yep, if you are a basic rate tax payer, you are using it correctly :money:

Milarky

comdw wrote: »

The calculator could do with a 'balance transfer fee' box as so many 0% deals have a transfer fee which reduces the amount you earn stoozing by quite a bit.

Correct. As it stands it is unrealistic. The minimum payments have to come from somewhere and they aren't even mentioned. You can't regard cash in a stoozing account as untouched for the period of the promotional rate whether you actually withdraw any or not to make these payments. Therefore any stoozing calculator has to make allowance for them (even if the user is not being told it has) The easiest way might be to have a drop down of common minimum payments (2%, 3%, 5%) - in fact to allow the user to select any repayment rate above 2%.

But the fee is the bigger of these problems in general and so the option to specify a fee is really a must. (I suggest 'amount' rather than 'percentage' because that makes the user think about fee in more concrete terms and does not require added complication in calculating the fee amount from other information given)

These changes would make the user 'responsible' for considering the need to make payments and the need to cater for any fee. Can't expect 100 percent accuracy but can get a lot closer to the reality by doing these two things.

Lugh_Chronain

Thanks Dan, just thought I'd double check. :money: :money:

YorkshireBoy

Users should also be aware that, in practice, you'll never get 9 months interest out of a 9 month deal. Personally, I always knock off a month to allow for start up and pay off delays (just in case you can't get another card and you have to make two transfers (and including a weekend) to repay the card.

This is particularly important now that BT fees have become more prevalent. For example, it's quite possible (on shorter deals) that the first 6 months 'profit' will be used to repay the BT fee, leaving only the remaining 3 months as pure profit for the stoozer. Now if you lose a month of this, as you may well do under the circumstances I've detailed above, that's 33% of your 'true' net profit lost.