New 0% card doesn't have high enough limit !

stroke

Hello,

Currently have £10,000 on a card, with the 0% ending in April.

Looked to shift it now to the Santander offer - 27 months at 0%.
Got accepted, but the credit limit is £5,000.

Any suggestions what I should do ? Ideally I'd like to shift the whole debt somewhere before April.

Should I shift £5k to Santander now, and look for another offer nearer April.
Or, ask Santander to increase the limit ?
Or ... cancel the Santander card (within the cooling off period) and look for another option (risk is that the Santander application would affect my credit score )!

[Deleted User]

Move 5k (or as much as permitted).

Apply for another card.

If rejected, focus on paying down the interest bearing balance.

stroke

thanks for the advice

bd10

I personally would focus on paying down the balance as soon as possible. That is the only viable option in my opinion. Sure, transferring £5k onto a new card may solve the problem in the short term but I expect those long zero card offers to vanish sooner or later. I recall seeing a graphic with the average tenor of BT offers. They have been in constant decline in recent months.

As note on the side: I remember 2008. Was working in credit risk for one of the big lenders. We were given the task to slash limits of medium/smaller corporate customers. That was brutal. Lesson: this happened over night; OK back then it was a panic reaction to the credit market fallout, but if we should have a repeat of that, these zero/BT cards might vanish extremely quickly.

chattychappy

stroke wrote: »

Should I shift £5k to Santander now, and look for another offer nearer April.

Yes. Personally I would have applied for Santander a little closer to April as well.

stroke wrote: »

Or, ask Santander to increase the limit ?

No point. They won't do it on a new card, and later on it will be to late to BT.

stroke wrote: »

Or ... cancel the Santander card (within the cooling off period) and look for another option (risk is that the Santander application would affect my credit score )!

No, don't do that. Take the credit you've got. Bird in hand. If you cancel the card and apply in April, you might get the same situation again - you get a card but with insufficient limit. By the way, the odd search in your credit history isn't a problem.

In the meantime, always pay at least £1 more than minimums, even on 0% deals. That avoids a "minimum payment" marker in your credit history which could indicate distress and make it less likely you can get a card in March/April.

Obviously you need to have an honest approach to your overall position - is your debt going the right away, or are you robbing Peter to pay Paul?

stroke

I could pay it off now if pushed but would prefer to stick it onto a BT card and pay it off over the duration of the 0% offer. I'm going to xfer what I can to the card and then set the monthly payments as necessary to ensure it's all paid by the time the offer ends.

And with the remainder on the old card - I'm now thinking my partner can get the card also and transfer the remainder onto that - again, paying off at a Monthly rate to clear it by the end of the 0% offer.

And if necessary, I could pay them off in full in the meantime - I just would prefer not to for now !