New credit card for consolidating debts

bradbird1990

Hi all,

I have been a viewer of these forums for a little over 6 months but have never posted before so hey!

In my last 3 years of working full-time and previous 3 years of studying I have accumulated a £2k overdraft and roughly £4.5k worth of credit card debt over 2 cards (Santander at 2k limit currently at £1700 and Barclays at 3.5k limit sitting at £3000).

I am slowly but surely paying it off. I made the decision about 6 months ago to just cut them up for good and stop spending and even if I only just pay off £100 on each per month then I'm still working towards 0. I've stuck to it and pay off £100 + any interest and fees incurred. The Santander's interest is about £17 extra per month and my Barclays 0% runs out in November which is why I am posting this thread today for a bit of advice.

Now you have a little background into my debt. I was just writing to ask what I can do to minimise the interest I have to pay. I'm happy with paying off the £200 per month I am now and can do this comfortably for the next year or 2 until it is gone. My credit rating according to noddle.co.uk is 1/5 which is weird because I have been really good with paying off my cards and it was 3/5 6 months ago. Because of my 1/5 credit rating I'm really worried about applying for another card to consolidate my 2 cards debt. I know that applying for cards makes your credit rating drop further and applying for a credit card in the first place with a 1/5 score I'm probably going to get rejected on all of them.

What can I do? Ideally I want a credit card with a £5k limit and 0% over 12 months so everything is one neat place and I can just keep hammering the monthly payments until it's gone.

What would be even more amazing is if I can get a limit of £7k so I can also transfer my overdraft debt over to and removing my overdraft completely meaning I can just make x amount of payments to clear off all of my debt completely in maybe 3 years?

I have a good job as a software/web developer with a recent pay rise so am now earning £35k per annum which means my take home is roughly £2100 per month. With my current outgoings and savings plan I could probably afford a bit more than £200 per month. If I know that I won't be paying any interest I would be happy with increasing it because I'll know it's going directly into paying off my debt.

Thanks for reading and look forward to any advice! I welcome constructive criticism .

fatbelly

£17 per month is a lot of interest on £1700. If you get the right card you can transfer that to 0% straight away.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/cut-loan-overdraft-costs

bradbird1990

It's £17 including the monthly fee of £3 - It's a Santander 123 credit card.

Thanks for the link I will check it out. When you say I should be able to transfer it to 0% are you talking about all of my debt or just the 1 credit card?

fatbelly

depends on the credit limit you get but I was talking about moving the overdraft debt - that's the advantage of using one of the cards in that list.

You usually have 60 days to do your transfers from opening the card

enthusiasticsaver

I am not sure why you only have a 1/5 noddles score as 4.5k is not an astronomical amount of credit card debt. Have you defaulted or missed any payments? You can enquirer which cards you would likely to be accepted on and see if that throws up anything.

Kitten868

I wouldn't take much notice of your noddle score. The thing that is important is whether you have any defaults and have always paid your minimums.
There's a credit card checker on mse to see if you have a good chance of being accepted. I would try for an mbna, Tesco or virgin as they all do money and balance transfers. Just apply for one and see what balance you get and go from there.

sourcrates

The thing is, with these long 0% deals they offer, only a small percentage of people qualify for them, unless you have exceptionally good credit, you may not qualify, and be offered an alternative product instead.

If you think about it, if a credit card company offered all its customers 18 months @ 0%, it would stop making money overnight.

They are headline grabbing deals, designed to draw you in, the reasoning behind it is that if you are not successful in getting the deal you wanted, you will still take the deal thats offered.

I would tread very carefully if i were you.