Balance transfer large balance

Daylight82

Hi all, 

I have a large balance (£18k) across two cards both charging interest. I would like to transfer to 0% to try and get back on track with clearing the balances. 

Due to the large amount I’m being rejected for balance transfers by card suppliers. I have a very good credit score (969 Experian) so I can only assume the card companies assume I’m trying to borrow further which I’m not.  

Is there a work around to this so I can get back decreasing my balances rather than just paying interest mostly? 

Do card companies listen to cursumdtances? I’d rather not apply for too many cards to balance transfer as these will have a detrimental effect on my credit score. 

Thanks in advance 

MrFrugalFever

There is never a ‘work around’ or ‘card company understanding circumstances’ unfortunately.

there are a number of CC providers which have soft search eligibility checkers on their own websites and offer varying degrees of BT offers, I would start with checking them out. 

You may have to settle for a smaller than required limit and transfer what you can across whilst maintaining a minimum payment on the newly created 0% CC and paying off large chunks on the highest interest bearing CC’s first.

Also, might be worth heading to the Debt Free Wannabe forums and look at ways you can cut back to help pay off CC’s quicker or not rely on credit at all.

[Deleted User]

Nobody but you sees the credit score unfortunately so your "very good" score is actually worth nothing, it is never used in any lending decision, lenders score you based only on the data on your file using their own scoring systems that you will never see.

As you suspect, given you have 18k of debt and cannot pay it off and are paying interest on it, it's fairly obvious to any lender that giving you a card would mean a massive risk as you could simply run up debt on that card too. There is not a chance you would get an 18k limit anyway.

You'd do better biting the bullet and asking the lenders for a financial hardship consideration. Yes your gimmick score would go down but you can see already that having a high score means nothing so might as well take the hit and get the interest frozen so you can pay off the capital.

Dobbibill

Welcome to the forum.

Head over to the DFW board and post a SOA - the good forumites there may be able to suggest hints and tips to reduce your outgoings and throw more at the interest incurring debt. 

Look at maybe getting a lower limit with a BT deal to transfer at least some of the debt as you will struggle to double your credit facilities. At least some of the debt on 0% is better than none!

Have a look at snowballing the debt which is focusing on paying the most off your highest interest bearing card first and when you've paid that you recycle the payments you were making to the next card and so on. 

All the best.

maj1987

Mbna do a soft check and likely limit they will give you if you use their website so no harm on credit report, just read on another thread Halifax/Lloyds do to.

RBYHS

Santander also do that. 

Worth a try. 

 maj1987 said:

Mbna do a soft check and likely limit they will give you if you use their website so no harm on credit report, just read on another thread Halifax/Lloyds do to.

Daylight82

maj1987 said:

Mbna do a soft check and likely limit they will give you if you use their website so no harm on credit report, just read on another thread Halifax/Lloyds do to.

Thank you. One of the cards I have is with MBNA already but I’ll look at Halifax & Lloyds as well

maj1987

I’m sure mbna are part of the Lloyds group so that might hinder a transfer between the two just a thought.

Brie

It may be a case of getting 2 cards so you can pass the balance back and forth from MBNA to Halifax & another MBNA to your other card.  

But what you are trying to do ultimately is have £36k worth of credit.  And unless you have a wonderfully high salary right now and absolutely no other debts (car, mortgage etc) this won't be possible.  You might get 2 cards with a total of £5k but then will have to juggle carefully to whittle down the overall debt without running out of 0% time and being hit with the overinflated amount of interest that are then the norm.

Daylight82

Brie said:

It may be a case of getting 2 cards so you can pass the balance back and forth from MBNA to Halifax & another MBNA to your other card.  

But what you are trying to do ultimately is have £36k worth of credit.  And unless you have a wonderfully high salary right now and absolutely no other debts (car, mortgage etc) this won't be possible.  You might get 2 cards with a total of £5k but then will have to juggle carefully to whittle down the overall debt without running out of 0% time and being hit with the overinflated amount of interest that are then the norm.

Thank you. I have done some soft eligibility checks with a few different banks and getting nowhere unfortunately. I have got 100% approval on a couple of cards via the money saving expert eligibility checker but both are quite short 0% terms (6 & 9 months respectively. No idea what limit on them though so could be pointless for my needs. 

I’ll have to think on I guess!

Chrysalis

Not pointless, 6 months is better than nothing, and the cards might give you new offers as an existing customer which you could then move the balance around.

6 months of interest at normal rates will be quite high for 18k even just 6 months worth.

Whats your current utilisation level?