Stoozing: Make Free Cash from Credit Cards article discussion

YorkshireBoy

@CLVI

Egg Money is the only fee-free SBT card, so you need to appeal their decision.

Re Virgin, you don't need to use cheques. Customer services will action a transfer to your current account if asked to do so (ostensibly a transfer of your overdraft to the card), but check with them that it's also at 0%.

Why apply for the Barclaycard (and in doing so place another search on your file which the Egg underwriter will see when you appeal) without a mule card in place?

CLVI

Thanks for your help Yorkshire boy, I will look into appealing with Egg. I applied for Egg before barclaycard albeit a matter of days, and thought with an excellent credit record that there would be no problems:o

How wrong can you be.....

A real shame that there is no other way of prolonging or increasing my stoozing beyond july.:mad:

georgeowilson

First time stoozer - in need of advice

Have just opened the Abbey Zero card (0% interest for 6 months 0% balance transfer fee), transfered £4,000 onto egg money and then taken £3,300 (money left to invest in my ISA this year) of that and put it into an ISA. Could someone please suggest the best place to pay the monthly fees off from i.e. should I pay them from a current account or from the egg money card?

Fingers crossed it doesn't go horribly wrong )

YorkshireBoy

georgeowilson wrote: »

Have just opened the Abbey Zero card (0% interest for 6 months 0% balance transfer fee), transfered £4,000 onto egg money and then taken £3,300 (money left to invest in my ISA this year) of that and put it into an ISA. Could someone please suggest the best place to pay the monthly fees off from i.e. should I pay them from a current account or from the egg money card?

Well personally, I'd make them from income via DD collection from my current account (in fact I am doing!).

However, two points to note...

1. The minimum payment on the Abbey card will rise to 2.25% from October, which will be £90 on your opening balance, and reduce with every month that passes. I seem to remember the minimum BT to Egg is £100, so if you go this route you'll have to overpay each month. Goes against the grain really doesn't it?

2. You shouldn't be leaving £700 on Egg Money making only 4% AER. Move it somewhere else for 6.5%+.

georgeowilson

Thanks Yorkshireboy, that makes a great deal of sense, only that it took Abbey a while to get the account opened and Ive now only got 5months left to play around with. I'll move the rest of the money on the egg money card to a higher interest account.

If I may, a second question:

Rather than paying it back the money at the end of the six months (and assuming financial situation doesn't change) are you an advocate of continuing to stooze by transferring the debt to another card?

Cheers,

George

YorkshireBoy

georgeowilson wrote: »

Rather than paying it back the money at the end of the six months (and assuming financial situation doesn't change) are you an advocate of continuing to stooze by transferring the debt to another card?

My policy has always been if you were able to get another card to transfer the debt to, then why on earth did you wait to apply for it!? That's why Egg Money is such a useful card to have.

My stoozing has been very much boom and bust over the last 2 years or so due to my blitz approach to credit card applications (4 or 5 at a time).

Because of this, my stooz pot has wild swings (£45K to £5K, and back up to £59K over the last 3 months alone...at at cost of only £300 in fees).

Those that take the softly softly approach will have a more balanced stooz pot over time (and might not be as 'busy' at the application/payback stages...I've just taken 4 x 6 month deals), but they might not make as much money.

Grumpy_Old_Duffer

I 'stoozed' a few years ago before the introduction of the 'typical' 3% charge for Balance Transfers (BT), and was very happy with the process; my stoozing peaked at c. £70k at one time (probably small-fry to some :rolleyes: )

However, there must now be a critical point at which stoozing is not worth the effort. From what I can see (willing to be corrected), unless you can stooze on a card that is at least a 9+ monther (a rarity when I was stoozing), then the 3% BT charges wipe out any possible profit.

Also, can someone advise, is the Virgin & Egg cards still the only ones available that can be used as a conduit for getting the money into Bank Accounts for onward transfer to High Interest savings accounts.

Why am I looking at this again ..... went shopping in TESCO (usually have it delivered) and saw their Credit card with a 14 month BT offer.;)

JimmyTheWig

Grumpy_Old_Duffer wrote: »

I 'stoozed' a few years ago before the introduction of the 'typical' 3% charge for Balance Transfers
...
unless you can stooze on a card that is at least a 9+ monther (a rarity when I was stoozing), then the 3% BT charges wipe out any possible profit.

Your logic is quite correct.
It used to be the case that everyone was doing fee-free 6 month 0% deals. Now people are charging about 3% fee but the deals are mainly 12 months +.
So there's plenty of profit to be made, especially if you don't have to pay tax on your interest.

Grumpy_Old_Duffer

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

............ especially if you don't have to pay tax on your interest.

......... and at the higher rate!!!!

JimmyTheWig

Grumpy_Old_Duffer wrote: »

......... and at the higher rate!!!!

I presume you've used up your ISA allowance?
And don't have an offset mortgage?
And don't have a spouse? (Or if you do, they also pay higher rate tax)

If you have to pay tax on interest at the higher rate then it's barely worth stoozing. If you earn 6% interest, you'll see 3.6% interest. I know you can get deals up to 15 months, but you have to allow time to transfer the money, etc. You'd be lucky to make 4% on it in total. So with 3% fees you're looking at 1% profit. And that's not taking the minimum repayments into consideration. If these are non-trivial then you'll get less than the 4%.
With a credit limit of £5k you're looking at a profit of 50 quid at most.
Seems like quite a bit of work for not much return.