Advice on clearing our Credit card debts please? Loan or Bal Trans cards?

bootcutboy

Hi all

Over the last 5 or 6 years my wife and I have ran up approximately £7k of debt on 4 credit cards through buying and doing up our first house, getting married etc... We have used balance transfer offers on this debt before to ensure we aren't paying lots of interest but it is coming round to the time when insurance will be added on so we would like to try and consolidate our debts again.

Can anyone advise us on the best/cheapest way to do this please? I am not working but My wife has a good job and we both have decent credit, should we go down the 2 or 3 balance transfer cards route again or should we be looking at one lump sum loan?

Any advice would be really really great as we are really trying to sort our finances out for the long term. :beer::beer::T

bootcutboy

Ps. I Should add that I am recovering from a spinal injury which means working is just not possible right now, and I currently do not get any benefits as I have been told I am not eligible for anything.

[Deleted User]

The answer depends on what options are available to you. You will be reliant on your wife applying, as you have no income.

What debt is in whose names?
What does your wife earn?
What is her credit history like?
Have you managed to reduce the debt at all?

bootcutboy

Deleted_User wrote: »

The answer depends on what options are available to you. You will be reliant on your wife applying, as you have no income.

What debt is in whose names?
What does your wife earn?
What is her credit history like?
Have you managed to reduce the debt at all?

Thanks for replying, the debt is around £4K in my name and £2k in my wife's. She earns around 35k and credit history is fairly good, she is just coming to the end of paying another of her older loans off so that should hopefully help her credit rating.

Once again any advice would be brilliant, thanks.

[Deleted User]

I'd suggest she tries for a BT card now.

It may not be enough to cover the whole debt, but once some is shifted, another application could go in.

EssexHebridean

Your first stop is to put together your Statement of Affairs (SOA) - you'll find the link in the "sticky" post at the top of the board. This gives you a solid budget to work to - and that is a great first step as it leaves you in a position of knowing exactly what's going where, and how much you should have left over each month. The next step from there is to work out whether what *should* be left over, actually is!

Personally I'd say avoid loans to consolidate - they rarely fix the problem, particularly if someone hasn't done the first steps of putting together, working with and sticking to a budget for a reasonable time first. Are the cards now cut up so you're not tempted to use them? Are you still using cards at all?

Have you made sure that your NI stamp is being paid if you're not working or in receipt of benefits? What is the expected timeline for you returning to work? Is there anything that you could do home-based for the time being? Even things like surveys etc could help a little.

So to recap - get that SOA sorted, post it in here and we can take a look and see where any savings might be able to be made - then we can talk about next steps forwards. make the SOA honest and accurate - it needs to reflect the way things are right now - not a picture of what you think is "expected" - that doesn't help anyone, and anyway we can always tell!