Balance transfer fee and other things!

orinoco

Can somebody confirm for me whether or not a balance transfer fee is added to the balance of the card and treated in the same way (i.e. interest free for the same term as the transfer). Am hoping to use a Barclaycard platinum transfer to offset against my mortgage.

Also I was looking at my monthly payments the other day and I suddenly thought, is it possible to pay a mortgage by credit card with a 0% purchase card and then offset that amount each month? I have just got the Halifax card 15 months interest free on purchases. Would paying the mortgage by credit card count as a "purchase"? It just seems that the biggest single payment I have would be really useful for offsetting!!

Thanks

Orinoco

Milarky

The fee is treated by different card issuers differently but in the case of barclaycard my experience is that they charge the same rate of interest on the fee as the balance transfer (it becoming part of that balance at its creation)

On the purchases card issue, no you can't do that sort of thing in practice (the card would not be accepted and anyway the transaction could go through as 'cash') For that you need a 'balance transfer' card - ususally by means of a cheque.

There are ways of extracting the cash equivalent value from a purchases card but they can be hit or miss. Use the 15 months instead to do all normal budgeting purchasing instead and (let's say) once you have passed the 2% of balance during a month (i.e next month's minimum payment on the card) put all subsequent spending against the cash you would otherwise have used and put that into offest.

orinoco

I am doing the latter, my wife and I both have the one card and are using that for purchases then transferring from our current account to offset against the mortgage.

Thanks