Here Goes...Starting Up on a Journey

Superhoopza

MFWannabe said:

How long would it take you to pay off the debts if you don’t take out the new loan? How much interest would you pay in that time? 
Hard to say for sure, depends if I put it towards credit card payments or towards paying off a loan in full. My total debt will take 3.5-4 years to pay and in that time I'll pay about £18k interest if things stay as they are. This reduces if I can shift any interest anywhere.

Have you looked on the eligibility calculator at loans or balance transfer cards to see what you can get?
yes, that's how I found I was 'eligible' for this loan. It's the best I've had so far. 

If you give it a bit longer paying down the debts do you think you’ll get better offers than the current one? 
That's the golden question. I don't know.

Responses in bold above

Superhoopza

stymied said:

If this has come up already then surely something better will come soon

Hopefully it's a positive sign yes. It is the bank I bank with though so that may sway it a bit. I've never had them come up as 100% on an eligibility checker before and am carrying a full OD and CC with them so my credit position with them is very poor, so it's odd they came up 100%.

Floss

I guess the other thing to consider is what you will do with the CCs if you take out the loan - will you close them all & live to your income? And how long is the loan for? 

Superhoopza

Floss said:

I guess the other thing to consider is what you will do with the CCs if you take out the loan - will you close them all & live to your income? And how long is the loan for? 

Either reduce the balance from the CCs by £9k or pay off a higher APR loan and use the excess funds towards CC payments. The loan is 3 years so doesn't extend my total debt time.

Floss

Superhoopza said:

Floss said:

I guess the other thing to consider is what you will do with the CCs if you take out the loan - will you close them all & live to your income? And how long is the loan for? 

Either reduce the balance from the CCs by £9k or pay off a higher APR loan and use the excess funds towards CC payments. The loan is 3 years so doesn't extend my total debt time.

If it were me, I would pay off the loan & whatever is left off the highest interest card, then increase the CC payments to be paying out the same as you are now.

If you decide to go for it, check the interest rate is what the offer says, sometimes it can change from the illustration when it becomes reality.

enthusiasticsaver

Superhoopza said:

Got a "triple-lock" guarantee on clearscore's loan comparator for a £9k loan from Santander at 19.9%, cheaper than all my other loans and couple of my credit cards. The problem is I feel I've done the leg work and paid off a good amount of the interest of my higher rate loans and after they apply the further 58 days interest, I wouldn't be saving much, if anything by moving to a cheaper loan rate. What are people's thoughts about that? Happy to engage in debate, only thing I don't want to entertain is the argument that "consolidation loans aren't generally a good idea", that's not useful for me now. I just want to pay the least interest possible as quickly as possible.

I think it is worth considering.  I would get settlements on all three loans as they are all higher rates of interest. 

You need to check that you can really get that interest rate though as sometimes once they are applied for they can be higher as somewhere in the small print it just says a percentage of people will get that rate.  I don't know what that triple lock guarantee is and whether it really is a guarantee though. 

As you say there will be 58 days interest on closing the loans so I would get a settlement figure, find out the monthly repayment on the new loan and then work out how that will change your budget. 

Superhoopza

Thanks for the advice. I done an eligibility checker directly with Santander for a loan on the same terms but was refused, so it was a non starter after all.

Superhoopza

But yes the only way of knowing the financial benefit is to request a final settlement offer from a loan provider and see how it would impact future payments.

Superhoopza

Also tried an eligibility checker for a second credit card with santander and unsurprisingly got turned down. I'll carry on as I was. Thanks all

MFWannabe

Superhoopza said:

MFWannabe said:

How long would it take you to pay off the debts if you don’t take out the new loan? How much interest would you pay in that time? 
Hard to say for sure, depends if I put it towards credit card payments or towards paying off a loan in full. My total debt will take 3.5-4 years to pay and in that time I'll pay about £18k interest if things stay as they are. This reduces if I can shift any interest anywhere.

Have you looked on the eligibility calculator at loans or balance transfer cards to see what you can get?
yes, that's how I found I was 'eligible' for this loan. It's the best I've had so far. 

If you give it a bit longer paying down the debts do you think you’ll get better offers than the current one? 
That's the golden question. I don't know.

Responses in bold above

I thought your earlier post said the offer was through clear score? Not the mse checker?