Balance Transfer

lily0175

I have about £5,500 to transfer to a 0% card - however the credit limits though assumed are pretty miserable at around £1500. Everyone shouts about balance transferring as being the thing to do but how does one actually transfer the balance if the credit limit is so restricted?

eskbanker

There's no point making assumptions about credit limits you may or may not get as you won't find out until you apply, and the fact that applications involve credit searches leaves little room for experimentation. Many cards use £1,200 as an arbitrary representative figure but don't bank on that, you may get significantly more or less than that.

Your best bet will probably be to post more info (debt, current cards and limits, which cards they are, credit history, earnings, etc) and people may be able to offer advice about which cards are likely to be worth trying.

However, worth bearing in mind that not everyone will actually be able to BT their entire balance so you may just need to take what you can get and do a partial transfer to at least alleviate the interest burden.

Nasqueron

Even if you only get £1500, it's still £1500 (approx, with allowance for a possible fee) less you are paying interest on meaning you can make more of a dent in the bigger balance as you are paying off more debt than interest

lily0175

Thank you for your replies.
I currently have a First Direct CC with credit limit of £15k, no mortgage, business loan of £140k no missed payments, O/D £10k. No bad debt or black marks on credit rating, earnings in excess of £50k per year. Hope this helps.

bigadaj

lily0175 wrote: »

Thank you for your replies.
I currently have a First Direct CC with credit limit of £15k, no mortgage, business loan of £140k no missed payments, O/D £10k. No bad debt or black marks on credit rating, earnings in excess of £50k per year. Hope this helps.

Ok, sounds like you are self employed, in which case the earnings might be turnover rather than income.

If that's the case then the debt to income ratio might be concerning for a lender.

At the end of the day just take what they offer and make another application to try and get more debt into zero or low rate interest, then attack paying it off as moving debt is diffrperent to repaying it.

lily0175

Thank you again - figure stated as income is income not turnover, turnover significantly more but my wages kept to sensible level and rest reinvested.

Superscrooge

The majority of credit cards I have applied for recently seem to use a £1200 credit limit as a representative figure. But this is no indication of the credit limit you will be given.

I am retired and my income is a lot less than yours. But both Nationwide and Bank of Scotland gave me balance transfer credit limits in excess of £5,000 so it might be worth applying to one of these?

lily0175

Thank you for the information.