What should I do?

cateuk

Hi all, I’m getting myself very confused with what I should do to help myself financially and would appreciate your help. 

I need to move house within a year but due to my debt, I’m not left with enough from the sale of my house to actually afford to buy. I do appreciate that I’m lucky to own my home but for various reasons beyond my control, I need to leave but I can’t afford too. 
I owe 27k against a Barclays mortgage reserve and 3k on a barclaycard with the 0% ending in august. I have been swapping the credit card debt between barclaycard and Mbna 0% offers but it doesn’t seem to be getting lower very fast, admittedly I’ve only recently started paying a little over the minimum payments. 

I was wondering if consolidating all or some of my debt into a long term loan would be the best way because loans seem to be a much lower rate than the 4.5% reserve account APR? Currently the interest is about £100 per month on the reserve account. So most of what I’m paying is just being used to cover the charges and isn’t really making a dent. 

Any help would be much appreciated. 

fatbelly

4.5% is very low and I doubt you'd do better than that.

I think the way forward is to post a statement of affairs (format for mse) and let us look at the details

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

cateuk

fatbelly said:

4.5% is very low and I doubt you'd do better than that.

I think the way forward is to post a statement of affairs (format for mse) and let us look at the details

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

Thanks for replying. I was confused because I’d look at 20k loans at an offer rate of 2.8% but something was telling me this was a bad choice. The only thing I could think is a loan is a fixed amount whereas if I leave it in the reserve I can pay more/less depending on my situation.

I’ll complete the attached and add over the weekend.

TheAble

Banks might be wary in any case about letting you consolidate that amount of debt, it's a big lump of cash.

enthusiasticsaver

Consolidation rarely works and 4.5% is already a good rate.  You need to start paying a fair bit more than minimum repayments to make a dent in the debt and maybe be a lot more disciplined if the reserve is building up simply because you are able to spend on it.  It would be a good idea to stop using it altogether and live within your income.  Have you been using it to spend on essentials? A £27k mortgage does not sound very high.  How old are you and are you working?