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Do balance transfers / money transfers affect credit rating any differently?

Bossworld
Bossworld Posts: 426 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
edited 12 August 2019 at 7:35AM in Credit cards
Currently two-thirds of the way through a three year Sharesave scheme.

I've built up a balance on a 0% on spending card, that the Sharesave will pay off in full (and hopefully, return a decent profit too). I have no other debts and rigidly stick to the X a month spend on the card , which matches the Sharesave monthly investment.

Problem is that the interest free period ends in Dec 19, though the Sharesave runs til August 20.

I have a currently unused credit card that has the option for either a money transfer or balance transfer until Sept 20 for a 4% fee.

To make this work, I will also need to take out another card that will take me through to the next Sharesave (so Aug 21).

As far as I can see there are two routes:

1) Balance transfer from card (a) to card (b), take out a new 0% on purchases card (c).

2) Money transfer from card (b) to current account. Take out a new balance transfer card (c). Depending on card (c)'s limit, transfer as much as possible from card (a). Use some of the money transfer cash to pay off the remainder of card (a). Drip feed the remaining balance of the money transfer on a monthly basis, to be used for spending.

I'm currently thinking 1) is the better option as even if card (c) has a lousy limit to start, hopefully I'd be able to increase that limit after the first few months? The only logical reason for following 2) would be to keep juggling a balance between 0% BT cards if necessary due to low limits , which seems a lot of effort.

Is there any other reason to favour one over the other? I'll be doing the bank transfer/money transfer first, if there's any reason either one would affect my credit rating/applications more than the other.

Thanks for reading this far

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