Balance transfer - do you have to transfer the whole balance?

freeman3030

Hi all,
I've currently got 2 credit cards. Both on with balances on 0% purchases.
Sainsbury's £2,350 - 0% ends may 2017
Barclay card £2,000 - 0% ends Jan 2019 (I think)
I pay £100 per month on both of the cards, they're in my filing cabinet so I don't spend on them but have them to hand incase of an emergency.

As I've only got 4 months of the Sainsbury's card left before I start paying interest I thought about doing a balance transfer. I looked last night and MBNA came up that I would score a high chance of acceptance. So I put my info in and they came back with a credit limit of £1,300, which isn't quite enough.

Ive got enough savings to pay my Sainsbury's card down to £1,300 so I can then transfer the balance. But I was wondering...
Say I take the MBNA card, can I transfer £1,300 to that now, leaving £1,050 on the Sainsbury's card. Leave it 3 months, obviously I'll be making payments to the credit cards to bring their balances down... Then apply for another balance transfer card with say, Halifax. And transfer the remaining £750 to the Halifax card?

Is that possible?
Many thanks

Dobbibill

You can choose the amount you want to BT - be cautious though, you can't normally BT 100% of the credit limit. (It's normally between 90-95%) to allow room for the BT fee.

Nasqueron

It is possible yes but no guarantee the fourth card would be issued or what total you get. Obviously transferring as much as possible to the new card would be good and save you money, maybe then close the first card and wait a few months - it might be your total available credit that is stopping them offering a bigger limit on the new card e.g. if you have an income of say £20,000 and have £10,000 credit on 2 cards (I don't mean your balance but available credit), MNBA might be reluctant to give you too much but if the other card is closed you have more potential credit

However, I think you're missing a trick here, Barclarycard continually do offers to do a new BT for 18 months or whatever for me, check online and see what offers you have - if you have enough credit on the Barclaycard you could transfer the balance between that and the new card and you'd be sorted

freeman3030

Ah, well since posting it crossed my mind about having available credit and maybe that's why they couldn't offer me the full amount that I wanted. So I promptly lowered my available credit on Barclaycard by £2000 and requested to lower my limit on my Sainsbury's card by £1300. I'll leave it a month or two and then maybe try again as I think it will show that I've already gone through the preliminary checks with 2 credit card providers. I don't really know what effects your credit score as I didn't put a full application forward with either MBNA or Halifax.
Credit is so confusing!

Dobbibill

freeman3030 wrote: »

So I promptly lowered my available credit on Barclaycard by £2000

When you were lowering your limit did you check to see if there were any offers for you on your BC account?

SuperAllyB

If you're paying £200 per month between your cards, it would make more sense to make only the minimum payment to your Barclaycard and the remainder (presumably more than £100) to the Sainsbury's card.

Nasqueron

freeman3030 wrote: »

Ah, well since posting it crossed my mind about having available credit and maybe that's why they couldn't offer me the full amount that I wanted. So I promptly lowered my available credit on Barclaycard by £2000 and requested to lower my limit on my Sainsbury's card by £1300. I'll leave it a month or two and then maybe try again as I think it will show that I've already gone through the preliminary checks with 2 credit card providers. I don't really know what effects your credit score as I didn't put a full application forward with either MBNA or Halifax.
Credit is so confusing!

Your credit score is meaningless

If you didn't proceed with MBNA then perhaps the £1300 was just an advisory limit - did they say 100% you would get that?

I'd be tempted to request a limit increase with Barclays and then see if you can do a BT onto that from the other card - check what offers they have online