Apply for loan or 0% CC first? I need both

CSJE

Dear All,

I need around £17-20k now because I quite literally need to fix my roof while the sun shines! I have a tax refund coming in 3 months for about 10k because of years of overpayment (yippee). The other £7-10k I can tighten my belt over a year or 18 months and pay it off.

I am thinking I can take a loan for £10k (to be paid off when the refund comes through) and a credit card for maybe £7k if I can find a high enough limit on 0% interest. I don't really want to take out a £20k loan and pay interest on the whole hog as I know the £10k is coming from HMRC very soon.

Should I apply for the CC first or the loan first? Or is there a better strategy altogether that I am overlooking?

Any advice appreciated!

boo_star

You probably won't get a £7-10k limit on a card when you first open it, unless you're a really high roller.

If it were me I'd try for a loan for the whole amount.

Craig1981

morning
doubt you'll get a CC with such high limit, so try shop around for loans and see APR against the loans.
Majority of loan companies will accept over payments, so when the £10k refund comes in, bang it on the loan. if you clearing the remainder in 18 months, that would also be large chunks each moth of over payment
useful tools i find to calculate the interest reduction on a loan with over payments is this:
https://www.themoneycalculator.com/loans/calculators/loan-overpayment-calculator/#!/dealfinder/loans/

good luck, let us know how you get on

Nebulous2

If you are a regular credit card user with a good history, £7k would be quite possible. In fact you might cover your full £17k with two credit cards.

Would your roofer take credit card payments? If so then 0% purchases cards would be entirely free. If he wouldn't, then you'd need money transfer cards with a likely fee of 3-4%. You could then pay it off as you can, as long as you clear it by the time the 0% period is up.

Loans allow overpayments, with at most 2 months interest on the amount overlayed, so borrowing the full amount if you got a decent rate then repaying £10k quickly could be cheaper than a money transfer card.

If applying for more than one product whether a loan and a credit card or two credit cards I'd do them both together, before the other search had filtered through.

chelseablue

boo_star wrote: »

You probably won't get a £7-10k limit on a card when you first open it, unless you're a really high roller.

If it were me I'd try for a loan for the whole amount.

I got a credit card with Virgin last week and they gave me a £11,000 limit straight away.

I'd love to describe myself as a high roller but sadly I don't think I am :rotfl:

madvicker

The other bit to consider: could you actually pay for the roof work with a credit card?