Virgin Credit Card 0% for 9 months - YIPEE!

sassybird

Just received my Virgin credit card this week and have transferred a couple of small amounts over onto it. Tonight though I've taken the bull by the horns though and transferred £2,500 into an overdraft account I had and £2,650 into my mortgage account.

The lady at Virgin was very helpful and explained that if I did balance transfers on-line or over the phone with one of their team I would not pay the 2% balance transfer fee. If I used the credit card cheques that I had requested then I would pay 2% transfer fee on whatever amount the cheque was written out for. Something to note.

My hubbys now waiting for his Virgin card to arrive (already accepted) and he is transferring that amount over into the mortgage account too.

We both had GREEN egg cards and have paid the small balances off on these. We recently applied for the BLUE egg cards (0% on purchases for 5 months) so we'll be using that for all food and petrol in the coming months and leaving our hard-earned cash in the bank until it's pay-back time.

We're also keeping our eye on the 'anniversary date' for our GREEN egg cards as we will then get 5-6 months at 0% balance transfers, ours fall in February 2006.

I've only been learning the 'tricks of the trade' from you guys on MSE for a couple of weeks now, but it sure is interesting reading!

I've been spreading the word about the site to my friends and they think it's great!!

Many thanks to all for good advice - it's good to know there's nice people out there. :T

fatboyonadiet

In about 4 months (best to leave that long inbetween apps) time think about about a couple more cards on 0% and you can use your Egg card as a mule

sassybird

Have heard about this 'mule' before.

I did enquire but got a confusing answer as to what it's about.

I could do with a 1. 2. 3. on how to mule on a card.

Answers please...........cheers :beer:

Rafter

A mule card is a 'beast of burden' for carrying your balance from one card to your current account, if your new card doesn't offer 'super balance transfers' ie ones to a current account.

So you transfer your new 0% card limit to the mule card, then once it has cleared, transfer the credit balance from the mule card to your current account.

Egg was the best for this because of the free online balance transfers, although new customers don't get this while the 0% offer is running.

Virgin card is good too as MBNA also do this type of transfer as your know.

The key is avoiding a balance transfer fee.

Some lenders also refuse to let you have a positive balance on a credit card and will bounce the balance transfer back from where it came. This is to try and avoid money laundering (and stoozing)

The way round it is to transfer from your 'mule' card to your current account first, then do the transfer from your new card to leave your 'mule' with a zero balance. You may get charged a few days interest as a result though.

So far Egg and MBNA haven't been using this last technique though - so you should be fine with those unless you hear otherwise on this site.

Good luck.

R.