Balance transfer question

Old_Student

Hopefully I'm in the right forum.

I'm living overseas currently and doing a UK MSc (distance based) which I'm paying for on my UK credit card. I know it's not ideal, but it's the only way to pay it and there are job/income benefits afterwards.

I'm in my final year and I have two credit cards with my UK bank, one (card A) with £2.5k left of study fees on it, the other (card is clear. I only use card A for my fees, nothing else, no other debts, just not a lot of disposable cash.

Card A is where I'm due to put my final year fees on (another £2.5k), but I wonder if there is a benefit to the following or not:

Pay with card B, then transfer immediately to card A which has a 4.9% rate for 6 months on balance transfers, much less than my current rates for that period of time.

In either case, card A will have all of the debt whether I transfer or use it directly. I'm out of the UK and don't want any extra/new cards (unlikely to get one as been away for two years so far) and I make minimum payments while I'm away out of necessity.

[Deleted User]

If you’re not residing in the uk anymore then you shouldn’t have a uk credit card

Nebulous2

If they are both with the same bank you may not be allowed to BT. Usually BT's have exclusions written into the conditrions for cards from the same group.

Old_Student

!!! wrote: »

If you’re not residing in the uk anymore then you shouldn’t have a uk credit card

I am curious. How so?

[Deleted User]

Most cards specify you must be UK resident.

Old_Student

I would be interested to see which banks reference this as I have numerous international colleagues, with different UK banks, and it is perfectly common, normal and legal for each of us with regular high street banks.

My bank has my new addresses, my moves across the world and have sent me replacement cards throughout.

Experian (UK) also make reference to this as well:

"If you’re moving abroad temporarily, for example, for a couple of years, it might not necessarily be the case that you need close all of your accounts. If you can keep them open and active, they’ll continue to be part of your credit history. This includes bank accounts and credit cards. If you are using a credit card abroad, however, you should notify the card issuer to avoid any problems with suspected identity theft."

Reference: I am unable to post the link to the reference as a new user, however you can manually find it via Equifax (UK), resources, loans and credit, what happens to credit history when moving abroad.

If people through the forum are being advised to close their credit (or even bank) accounts while living/working overseas, this will clearly affect their returning credit history when the evidence is likely in their favour.

[Deleted User]

That’s something the CRA has posted.

Banks have their own rules the adhere to

onlyfoolsandparking

Old_Student wrote: »

Hopefully I'm in the right forum.

I'm living overseas currently and doing a UK MSc (distance based) which I'm paying for on my UK credit card. I know it's not ideal, but it's the only way to pay it and there are job/income benefits afterwards.


I'm in my final year and I have two credit cards with my UK bank, one (card A) with £2.5k left of study fees on it, the other (card is clear. I only use card A for my fees, nothing else, no other debts, just not a lot of disposable cash.

Card A is where I'm due to put my final year fees on (another £2.5k), but I wonder if there is a benefit to the following or not:

Pay with card B, then transfer immediately to card A which has a 4.9% rate for 6 months on balance transfers, much less than my current rates for that period of time.

In either case, card A will have all of the debt whether I transfer or use it directly. I'm out of the UK and don't want any extra/new cards (unlikely to get one as been away for two years so far) and I make minimum payments while I'm away out of necessity.

I think you've figured it out yourself and your more or less right, anywhere you can save interest is always the right choice and 4.9% is pretty reasonable.


Whether you should have a UK credit card whilst not living in UK seems irrelevant as that wasn't what you were asking, if you make it work for you all the better for you, too many wannabe snipers on here at times!