Can you keep moving between 0% 0fee balance transfer cards?

vikingdog

Ive tried searching on the forum but i think the word transfer is too generic.

I owe £7000 on a 0% tesco credit card which expires next month. I want to transfer to a 0% 0 fee balance transfer card such as the current NATwest offer for 14months. In 12-13months will anything stop me from transfering to a new 0% balance transfer offer with 0 fee, if available. 

I have been making over the minimal payments and will be increasing my payments and aboiding credit during this time. Honey moon and wedding are the big culprits.

la531983

Nothing stopping you, if an offer is available. You cant guarantee there will be, do you have a Plan B for clearing the debt if not?

vikingdog

Yea, I have some inheritance I can dump on it, but atm with the natwest offer lasting 14m I may as well take that and make payments whilst earning interest on the inheritance for a year.

Thats great, I was worried there might be some kind of track and trace to stop people bouncing debt around for ever.

CliveOfIndia

vikingdog said:

I was worried there might be some kind of track and trace to stop people bouncing debt around for ever.

No, there's nothing to stop you continually shifting debt from one card to another.  In the good old days when credit was far more easily available, people used to do this a lot, whilst earning money on their savings (what they call "stoozing").

The big fly in the ointment these days is simply the fact that credit in general is becoming harder to come by, so it's a dangerous gamble to just assume you'll be able to shift debt around ad infinitum, without having a backup plan to pay it off when you eventually hit a brick wall.

It's worth remembering that you can't usually transfer from one card to another that's owned by the same "parent" company (a quick Google will show you which banks own which cards).

It's also worth doing a quick bit of maths if you have to pay a fee for doing the transfer.  It's pointless paying a fee unnecessarily (i.e. don't just switch for the sake of it), but if you can earn more interest on your savings than what you'll be charged for the transfer, it may still be worth doing.

born_again

Who knows if offers keep coming.
But have a look at cutting back on wedding & honeymoon, while they are mostly one off events, it is not worth years of pain to pay back.

Emmia

born_again said:

Who knows if offers keep coming.
But have a look at cutting back on wedding & honeymoon, while they are mostly one off events, it is not worth years of pain to pay back.

I suspect the wedding and honeymoon has been and gone... 

adindas

vikingdog said:

Can you keep moving between 0% 0fee balance transfer cards?

The answer is NO. In fact the case like this could be seen quite here regularly on MSE. Some with a nice word the so called debt consolidation.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6474825/no-transfer-cards-approved/p1 No transfer cards approved

Keep in mind once you want to shift the debt, it is harder to get a new card compared to the previous one. The lender will see that with the new creditcard you could now double the debt. 

You might be lucky once but might not be next time. Also keep in mind depending on TCs, they could ask you to pay all of the balance in full with a relatively short notice. For that reason it is always a good plan to have enough money on the sideline to clear the full balance when needed.

daivid

In 8 years of stoozing I think the highest fee I've payed was about 0.75% (dwarfed by the 5% savings interest) but I like to keep an eye of the cards available incase it is worth switching early; during covid there was a long period where nothing better than a 3% fee was available. Currently it doesn’t look like I'll get anything better than a 1.5% fee, I want a new card in 7 months - things could get better, worse or stay the same. I have the money to pay off so it's no big deal, if it was genuine debt there would be a real risk of spiralling into higher fees, shorter terms or worse still getting stuck on the standard apr.

TL:DR If it's stoozing and you have they money to pay off before standard apr hits keep paying the minimum and looking for a new deal. If it is a genuine debt start paying (or diligently setting aside in savings) as much as you can whilst looking for a deal that takes the pressure off IF you can get one.

daivid

Should have added at the moment there are very few 0% no fee cards, and three of them are by the same banking group so won’t allow BTs to each other - not only does one need to get a 0% deal but it also has to be a provider that will accept the debt from the current card.

horsewithnoname

I’ve done it for years. As long as you get the offers, nothing stopping you. If you can transfer for cheaper than you can get on your savings, why not?
as others have said, it is good to have a plan B in case the offers dry up. 

Brie

The cards I have currently have all increased the fee to do balance transfers with the majority being around 5%.  That adds up if you have to keep moving from one card to another.  But I completely get why you might do so for a couple of years while you pay down the debt.