Best way to tackle credit cards

buttonbear1

Hi everyone!

I’ve been doing quite a lot of research but still not 100% sure of the best way to go about clearing my credit cards. 

Originally I had 2 credit cards in use 1x £6500 no interest, 1x £9000 21.6% interest

I unfortunately missed my payment on the £6500 last month so have lost the 0% I was sure I’d paid it as I normally do minimum payment once I’m paid but for some reason forgot.

I had 3 other credit cards with zero balance from over the past 10 years that I hadn’t closed luckily they had 0% balance transfer options so I have moved £5500 of the card I missed the payment from onto them this morning.

How would you go about paying all of this off completely? I’m going to cut up the cards/remove from Apple Pay etc so can’t purchase any extra with them.

This is the breakdown of the cards from today:

(Virgin 1) £2300 - Jan 2025 - 17 months 0% 

(Virgin 2) £1100 - Jan 2025 - 17 months 0%

(Lloyds) £2100 - July 2025 - 24 months 0%

(Tesco) £1000 - 23% 

(Barclays) £9000 - 21.6% 

Prior to this I was making minimum payments and live pay check to pay check (£24,100) and ended up using my credit cards as would run out of money. I was previously self employed so earnt quite a bit more hence the limits, I then entered full time employment and trying to work my way up but unfortunately carried some debt and gained more since. I’m about to start a new job but it’s a side step to a much better company but no pay increase as of yet (people easily promote within the year by the looks so should be closer to £28-30k which will make things easier I hope.)

So I’m not sure what to pay off 1st - my initial idea was clear the 0% cards equally by dividing the amount by the months and worrying about my interest cards after - I’ve had this debt for a while so I’ve accepted it’s going to cost me either way and being debt free is going to take a very long time.

Or make minimum payments on 0% and put the largest chuck into the Tesco clear that then go onto the the Barclays but probably won’t have cleared that or made much of a dent on the 0% cards before the time limits are up.

I cannot get any other 0% credit cards to move anymore credit score is average.

At a push I’ve got about £300-400 to stick on these cards currently a month. 

Any help would be really appreciated

Thank you

Martico

No point overpaying the 0% cards while you're facing fairly high interest rates on the other two cards.

So yes, absolutely: set a DD for minimum payment on the 0% cards.
Minimum or just over minimum on the Barclays.
Chuck everything that you can at Tesco, then move over to overpaying the Barclays debt. 

enthusiasticsaver

Set a DD for just over minimum on Virgin and Lloyds.  Target overpayments to Tesco first and then Barclays.  Remove all cards from wallet and resolve never to use them until you have cleared them. I  would tackle the interest bearing cards first especially as there is £10k on them. Hopefully by the time the deals expire on the others your credit report will have improved enough to get more BT deals. 

in_need_of_direction

Agree with what the others have said, target the Tesco one. At worst, you’ll get it cleared, at best you may get a balance transfer offer to reduce the interest being charged by Barclays.  Can you do anything to increase your income in the meantime? Are there any aspects of your former self employment that you could do part time even in the short term?

fatbelly

You should always setup a d/d to make payments to credit cards - even if that's just to make the minimum payment.

That avoids getting late payment markers and losing any promotional deal.

I agree with the others - you are in snowballing territory now

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/snowball-calculator.php

Have you checked by a soft search for 0% deals? (Ignore your score - it's a fiction)

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/eligibility/credit-cards/search/?goal=CC_BALTRANSFERV2

There's some free money and 0% overdraft available if you can switch banks

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/compare-best-bank-accounts/#overdrawn