Which card to pay off first..

Martico

Yeah, fair enough. It's something I only started to do once I'd got all of my cards to 0%.

Brie

Exodi said:

Silly to save up for an emergency fund (which you might earn 2% savings interest on) while paying ~20% interest on existing debt.

If an emergency came up, they should just put it on one of the cards they're currently paying off.

Glad I'm not the only one that thinks this way!!  

And just for fun I've checked the maths and if the total being paid is £450 a month then yes it would all be paid off in just over 2 years.  

I suggest you put a specific minimum DD amount in for the Barclaycard.  Say £120 or something and that way it will be paying a bit extra after a couple of months to make your credit record look a little rosier.  Not that anyone will much care.   Don't know if Tesco card will allow you to do similar - perhaps £100 a month?

Exodi

kimwp said:

Exodi said:

del1rious said:

Thank you all for your advice so the minimum payments are as follows (or thereabouts)

Tesco - 96
Amazon - 130
Barclaycard - 125

Realistically, I have about 450 to throw at this problem every month

Thanks, the sums look pretty good.

Assuming you intitally pay £96 towards Tesco, £229 towards Amazon and £125 towards Barclaycard (=£450), you would have paid off your Amazon card at the end of year 1.

Assuming you then add the additional £229 towards Tesco, (so £325 Tesco, £125 Barclaycard), you would have paid off the Tesco card around month 22 - which is extremely convenient as this is when your 0% offer expires.

You'd then have £450 to put towards the outstanding £1150 Barclaycard balance - paying it off in just under 3 months.

If you were able to commit £450 towards these debts every month, you would be debt free in just over 2 years.

Does this include the interest? When I started thinking about the maths, I couldn't come to a conclusion about how to figure the interest in.

Yes, I quickly did it in an excel sheet by month, adding interest monthly.

del1rious

Exodi said:

Thanks, the sums look pretty good.

Assuming you intitally pay £96 towards Tesco, £229 towards Amazon and £125 towards Barclaycard (=£450), you would have paid off your Amazon card at the end of year 1.

Assuming you then add the additional £229 towards Tesco, (so £325 Tesco, £125 Barclaycard), you would have paid off the Tesco card around month 22 - which is extremely convenient as this is when your 0% offer expires.

You'd then have £450 to put towards the outstanding £1150 Barclaycard balance - paying it off in just under 3 months.

If you were able to commit £450 towards these debts every month, you would be debt free in just over 2 years.

Thank you so much, I have written this down!! Gonna try my damndest to work toward these numbers. Being debt free in just over a couple of years sounds like a dream. 

Brie

del1rious said:

Thank you so much, I have written this down!! Gonna try my damndest to work toward these numbers. Being debt free in just over a couple of years sounds like a dream. 

Just don't forget to do the other side of this - making sure you stay out of debt.  That's the harder thing in my opinion.  (should be down to 0 debt in another 15 months!!!)

del1rious

Martico said:

Good luck - it's gonna take you a good while to clear that. Interest on both Tesco and Amazon will make it seem like two steps forward, one step back all the time. If it was me in this position:

I'd pay 100 pm to Tesco, 126 pm to BC (this can fall a bit every month as the min repayment falls), the rest to Amazon.
I'd look to see if I could get a 0% transfer deal for at least part of the Amazon card, then pay that at minimum.
I'd look to ways to raise more money to throw at Amazon. Go for surveys (Prolific Academic gets me around £25-30 a week at the moment), go for current account switching (see Martin's guide) for the one-off £150-175 welcome bonuses, sell unwanted stuff around the house, if possible make my budget tighter than it currently is and throw any extras at the debt. I'd also look at trying (it's tough) to build up an emergency fund so that you don't dip into the cards if an unexpected cost comes up. 

Thank you, this is pretty much what I am doing. Literally posted out two items of clothing this morning and I make about £0 a week (average) on mechanical turk which I'll throw at this as well. Tempting to use the extra cash to treat myself but the quicker the debt gone the better!!

Chrysalis

Pay more on the higher APR cards, but also pay more than minimum on the Barclays to increase chance of getting new 0% offers to use when this one expires.  Doesnt need to be loads more, so e.g. if min payment is £60 a month pay £80.