Am I doing things right?

nobby2011

I have a credit card balance of £5100 with lloyds, and a loan of £4790 also with lloyds.
I've just opened a card with virgin money, and done a balanced transfer on 0% for 10 months at no fee.
Now my plan is to get the card paid off within the 10 months then focus on paying the loan off.
Am I doing the right thing?

Debtslayer

What was the interest on the Lloyds card?
Is this the card you have balance transferred to Virgin?
What is the interest rate on the loan?

EssexHebridean

Sounds like a good start, although I get where Debtslayer is coming from too (if the loan interest rate is high then on the face of it it could be sensible to attack that first).

You need to remember if you did decide to switch focus to the loan that a) not all will allow overpayments and b) that each time you do a further 0% balance transfer to a card you'll mostly likely be paying a fee - usually in the range of 2.5 - 3%, so those fees will also mount up over time. You were lucky to have no fee this time but that was because of the short 0% period.

I'm personally a fan of getting rid of cards and worrying less about loans. There is something more "uncertain" about a credit card balance outstanding, somehow.

nobby2011

Yeah the lloyds card is the one I've shifted to virgin.
Lloyds card is 18.9%.
The loan is 2.5%
But like Essex I like to focusing on the credit card first.

Wookey

What will the rate on the Virgin card be once the initial 10 months is up?

EssexHebridean

Most of Virgin's cards appear to be 18.9% - 19.9% APR.

nobby2011

The virgin card will be 19.9% after 10 months, I will have it paid off well before that.
I have 27 months left of the loan at 2.5%.
Once the virgin card is paid off I'm going to start overpaying off the loan.
Once I've paid both of these off I'm planning on saving for a few months so I have a small emergency fund, then start overpaying my mortgage.

Debtslayer

I would start saving emergency fund after you've paid off credit card as your loan has a low interest rate of 2.5% and you should be able to get higher interest on savings also if you have emergency fund if anything goes wrong you'll have savings to use instead of having to put it on credit card

zippygeorgeandben

Make sure you pay that virgin card off after 9 months just allowing for any issues or forgetfulness which may occur. Good on you though for tackling it.

EssexHebridean

Debtslayer wrote: »

I would start saving emergency fund after you've paid off credit card as your loan has a low interest rate of 2.5% and you should be able to get higher interest on savings also if you have emergency fund if anything goes wrong you'll have savings to use instead of having to put it on credit card

At the moment - for easy access savings, which is what is needed for an emergency fund, you'll struggle to find anything that will pay more than 2.5%!

However - I agree that building at least some form of emergency fund from now is a sensible plan - start by putting aside maybe £25 or £50 a month - think about it on the basis that in just a month if your kettle or iron goes wrong you will be able to replace without resorting to a card. Even that is a start as sometimes it's the small things that can knock us back.