Best mule / strategy for new player

sillyusername

I'm relatively new to this game, have been 'slow stoozing' i.e. pushing all my daily spend to a 0% purchase card (HSBC purchase plus) for a while but I'm looking to up my game as it's going a bit slower than I'd like.

I hold a bunch of AMEX cards (nothing to do with stoozing, just for benefits/rewards) as well as a Barclaycard and a HSBC Purchase Plus.  Pretty much every soft search eligibility tool I've tried for pretty much every CC on the market suggests a 100% chance of approval so the market looks wide open to me.

I get regular 9 months 0% MT for 3% fee offers on my Barclaycard but this seems a bit lame?

Nobody seems to expressly advertise a 0 fee / low fee MT card at the moment.

The Halifax Clarity appears to allow fee-free cash withdrawals so I guess one strategy could be to get one to draw cash on, then immediately BT away to another card and pay the cash in over a bank counter but this seems like a lot of faff and I imagine drawing copious amounts of cash on a CC will quickly tank my ability to get any further credit?

Is there any other/better way to stooze more quickly?  Are there particular cards I should look to get which are highly likely to result in a promotional MT offer down the line that's better than the Barclaycard ones I keep getting?

Or is the best strategy to apply for the clarity card plus a bunch of BT cards, then start drawing cash and tanking my credit score in the hope it recovers by the time all the introductory periods expire?

grumbler

sillyusername said:

The Halifax Clarity appears to allow fee-free cash withdrawals so I guess one strategy could be to get one to draw cash on, then immediately BT away to another card and pay the cash in over a bank counter but this seems like a lot of faff and I imagine drawing copious amounts of cash on a CC will quickly tank my ability to get any further credit?

MTs are free too and the interest rate is the same as for cash.
And I'd be more concerned about deposifing copious amounts of cash to a bank account. 

swindiff

Halifax Clarity allows you to transfer 93% of your available credit limit to your bank account through the app.  No need to withdraw cash.

daivid

MT with Halifax Clarity works, make sure to have the BT card the debt is to be shifted to ready so as to do that the same banking day (using apps I do both before 8am). Halifax Clarity, a standard Halifax Mastercard and my MBNA card all give me fee free MT, Barclaycard did but not currently and Sainsburys offered before I shut the card.

MasterplanC

I agree the MT on Halifax Clarity combined with another 0% BT works very nicely.

DJSINGH

Sorry for digging up, but I cant find anything about fees on the halifax website.

Are you saying with a Clarity, there is no fee to move money to a bank account? So you do that, then immediately balance transfer to a card which has no BT fees (e.g. NatWest/Barclaycard)

swindiff

That is correct

PloughmansLunch

DJSINGH said:

Sorry for digging up, but I cant find anything about fees on the halifax website.

Are you saying with a Clarity, there is no fee to move money to a bank account? So you do that, then immediately balance transfer to a card which has no BT fees (e.g. NatWest/Barclaycard)

I've used my Clarity to transfer 2 separate lots of £7500, then paid back with BT cards as soon as I could. It's cost me maybe around £1.50 or so in Halifax interest, but you may be able to improve this with BT timings as I stupidly did one over a weekend.

daivid

PloughmansLunch said:

DJSINGH said:

Sorry for digging up, but I cant find anything about fees on the halifax website.

Are you saying with a Clarity, there is no fee to move money to a bank account? So you do that, then immediately balance transfer to a card which has no BT fees (e.g. NatWest/Barclaycard)

I've used my Clarity to transfer 2 separate lots of £7500, then paid back with BT cards as soon as I could. It's cost me maybe around £1.50 or so in Halifax interest, but you may be able to improve this with BT timings as I stupidly did one over a weekend.

£1.50 sounds pretty good. I made 3 MT totalling £16k and got charged about £1.40 on two of them, and nothing on the other. I did the same each time: MT 1st thing Monday morning, BT immediately after. I assume the MT that didn’t charge got BTed the same day whereas the others went through the next.

For DJSINGH: yes clarity offer a no fee MT (at 6.9% apr for me) which if you immediately BT at 0% and no fee will cost very little. Incidentally I get the same offer on my other Halifax master card and on my MBNA card (both old BT cards).

DJSINGH

daivid said:

MT with Halifax Clarity works, make sure to have the BT card the debt is to be shifted to ready so as to do that the same banking day (using apps I do both before 8am). Halifax Clarity, a standard Halifax Mastercard and my MBNA card all give me fee free MT, Barclaycard did but not currently and Sainsburys offered before I shut the card.

Hello. Do you mind sharing which MBNA card you have? They do a few. I notice the purchases and transfer card says it has a fee for money transfers.

daivid

It just calls itself MBNA Credit Card. It's a master card and was taken out years ago as a BT card. I now get BT and MT offers and can currently choose between 0% apr 4.5% fee, and 6.9% apr 0 fee. The later being very useful if it can be BTed to a 0% no fee card. Perhaps you have to have held the card a while to get these options, others on here have reported the same or very similar so it seems a pretty standard offer. Perhaps no good for a new customer but if you have existing cards with no balance it may be worth checking what MT offers they give you. In the past Barclay card and Sainsbury's have offered no fee MTs to me, others have reported several other providers doing the same for them.