Mortgage - pay off credit cards?

MaudeLebowski

My fianc! and I are about to start looking to buy a bigger property. He owns the property we currently live in and we plan on applying for a joint mortgage.

I currently have about £8,000 over 3 credit cards (out of an available limit of £22,250). These credit cards are all interest free until December 2020. Just looking for some advice/opinions on how I should approach this debt?
Should I pay off as much as I can before applying for our mortgage to get the overall balance down, or just keep chipping away at it at a slightly slower pace, leaving me a bit more disposable income?

I worked at Abbey for Intermediaries about a million years ago and know that then we just assumed a credit card payment of 3% of the total balance. Obviously if the debt was incurring interest I’d be putting as much disposable cash into it as possible but as I’m inline for a couple of decent bonuses at the end of the year I’m not concerned about paying it off by the time the interest free period ends.

Any opinions/advice welcomed!

Richard_Pia

It might be a good idea for you to find out what maximum mortgage you can borrow with the current credit card debt outstanding. You may find it is possible for you to borrow enough without paying down any of your debit meaning you can benefit from those 0% rates for longer.

MaudeLebowski

Thanks Richard. We completed an AIP at the weekend and the max was £238k which is more than enough for the sort of property we're looking for.