Balance transfer maths help!

Willowpop

Hi all, looking for a bit of help with some maths..I have about £6000 on 2 credit cards earning interest. A!third card is offering 2 deals:!
Either 0% until April 2017 for a 4.5% fee
Or 4.9% for life of balance with no handling fee.

I have £6000 to move and will be paying just over the minimum repayments. I will not have cleared the debt before the 0%offer finishes in April 2017 and would then look to move what is left to another 0% offer which would obvs have fees.!

I'm struggling to work out if I am better to take the 0% and keep bouncing the money around every year or so, or take the life of balance offer.
Is anyone any good at maths?!
Thanks in advance

Ben8282

0% for 4-5 months with 4.5% fee is a joke.

HappyMJ

Ben8282 wrote: »

0% for 4-5 months with 4.5% fee is a joke.

Add another 12 months. It's 2015 now offer ends 2017. It's still a joke though. I've seen much lower BT rates.

Willowpop

HappyMJ wrote: »

Add another 12 months. It's 2015 now offer ends 2017. It's still a joke though. I've seen much lower BT rates.

Yep, it's till 2017 so a fair length but high fees.
I doubt we would get another credit card offered with the limit we want, soit would be better than nothing I guess.
Just trying to work out if parking on the 4.9% for life of balance is better than hopping between 0% offers with (potentially high) fees if we can't get another card as a new customer.

Serendipitious

There's a credit card calculator at 'whats the cost' that will let you enter each scenario to compare costs.

Willowpop

Serendipitious wrote: »

There's a credit card calculator at 'whats the cost' that will let you enter each scenario to compare costs.

I'll have a look thanks.
Is the interest on a credit card charged on the original £6000 until it's paid off, or will the amount of interest come down as the debt comes down as it's being paid off?

Candyapple

Assuming card number 3 has a high enough limit to clear the £6k debt, have you thought about moving across the debt from the first 2 cards onto card 3 at the 4.9% rate and then closing cards 1 and 2, thus freeing up their limits and then in say 3 months time, try applying for a new card with either no fees to balance transfer or one with fees but for a long time at 0%?

Willowpop

Candyapple wrote: »

Assuming card number 3 has a high enough limit to clear the £6k debt, have you thought about moving across the debt from the first 2 cards onto card 3 at the 4.9% rate and then closing cards 1 and 2, thus freeing up their limits and then in say 3 months time, try applying for a new card with either no fees to balance transfer or one with fees but for a long time at 0%?

Card 3 has a big enough limit to move the whole debt from card 1 and most from card 2, so I could close card 1 immediately, and I'll hit the small amount remaining on card 2 hard and that will be empty too, so could close that.
I think the plan of action tonight is apply for the most likely card that we will be accepted for (according to the eligibility checker on here) and see what/if anything they'll give us.
Then park the whole £6k or whatever is left onto the 4.9% life of balance offer. And go from there. At least it gets 2 cards down from crazy interest to 4.9% as they have both just finished 0% offers.