Halifax Clarity - can/should I still stooze despite no Money Transfer offers available?

figgyc

By the way the clarity card came in the post this morning so I cant undo it anymore. But im in no rush to start using it, I have 90 days to make any balance transfers to the other cards. Although obviously if I wait longer thats less interest gained.

BoGoF

figgyc said:

BoGoF said:

Going to be honest, I think your "obsession with maximising how much money I can squeeze from the banks" is somewhat clouding your judgement. 

Yeah this is true or at least it was a few days ago when I got the idea. I saw on the halifax app they could give me a credit card and when i realised i could get the clarity it sort of went from there, I think i was in a bit of an "im a genius" headspace when im not really.

I suppose my problem now is I don't have a time machine. So I've done like 4 hard searches and their not going to go away even if I cancel the credit cards. So my credit is already going to be dinged. So i see no reason not to at least keep them. If i cancel them im probably not going to get another one if i need it (which I'm pretty sure i won't but wouldnt want to risk it).

So at this point i think in the short term im not getting any more credit, whether I stooze with the cards or not. So whats the downside? For me the only factor I can see is how bad the "making a bunch of cash withdrawals" signal is on my credit report and how long it lasts. And I thought I read people had done that before so I was hoping to draw from peoples experience in that, but maybe im wrong.

Let's say you plough ahead - what's the plans for clearing these cards in 12/18 months?

Also, not sure how recent all these applications were but if you cancel within the 14 day cooling off period I believe the hard searches are removed. 

figgyc

BoGoF said:

Let's say you plough ahead - what's the plans for clearing these cards in 12/18 months?

Also, not sure how recent all these applications were but if you cancel within the 14 day cooling off period I believe the hard searches are removed. 

The plan pretty much is clear them all at once when the deals end (besides minimum payments of course). I've got the £14k of savings I already have and i don't have any big expenses planned. And if I keep saving say £700 x 12 months from my salary as I am now that's £8400 right there which is most of the balance in itself, and the nationwide is a bit longer than 12 months, so I would at the very worst case be in the same financial position i'm in now, £14kish savings, no more credit card debt, (plus 8k in the LISA, 2k of LISA bonus and investment gains, although of course the latter are not guaranteed). 

My job is fairly secure IMO, its with a public sector company in software which is an area the business is focusing on, im in the union and my manager likes me a lot so I dont think im at a risk of getting laid off or fired. (Although it does mean my annual pay rise will only be a few %). And if I did lose my job I think I would pay the cards off there and then with the money I have just to avoid the potential of a debt spiral (even if its not the best option in terms of return I think it'd be the lowest risk).

born_again

 and then moved £8k from credit cards to my regular savers,

How are you going to do that?

As a regular saver is just that, you put so much a month in usually a max of £300. So you simply can not drop £8K into them in one go.

figgyc

born_again said:

 and then moved £8k from credit cards to my regular savers,

How are you going to do that?

As a regular saver is just that, you put so much a month in usually a max of £300. So you simply can not drop £8K into them in one go.

I am aware of this, in the sentence before I explained how I'm not really doing that, and in my second long post. I'm going to move £8k from the credit card to my LISA, which will allow me to not move £8k from my regular savers to my LISA (which im going to do anyway) and then move £8k from the CCs to the savers (which would be impossible). It accomplishes the same outcome in the end but keeps the money in the regular savers

BoGoF

Have you actually sat down and worked how much you going to gain from this? Just seems a lot of effort for potentially little gain - e.g. if your money is sat in a variable savings account and that ends up at 2% say in a few months is it still viable?

If you do decide to go ahead with it then pay more than the minimum payment (even by a £1) to avoid the minimum payment indicator on your credit file. I suspect you mind is made up so will bow out from this thread.

figgyc

BoGoF said:

Have you actually sat down and worked how much you going to gain from this? Just seems a lot of effort for potentially little gain - e.g. if your money is sat in a variable savings account and that ends up at 2% say in a few months is it still viable?

If you do decide to go ahead with it then pay more than the minimum payment (even by a £1) to avoid the minimum payment indicator on your credit file. I suspect you mind is made up so will bow out from this thread.

I had done some windows calculator basic maths to come to a total of about £490 in my head, that was in part of the original post which I cut out to make it a bit shorter believe it or not. But your right that I should have calculated a bit better. I just made this spreadsheet:

Stooze cards (round down to the nearest £10 due to ATM note sizes)
NatWest (13 months, 95% of £3150)	£           2,990.00
RBS (13 months, 95% of £3150)	£           2,990.00
Nationwide (18 months, 95% of £3600)	£           3,420.00
Total stoozed	£           9,400.00
Stooze costs
Nationwide 1.5% fee	£                 51.30
19 days 26.4% simple interest on £500 on Halifax card (avoidable?)	£                   6.89
Total costs	£                 58.19
Interest gained
£744 not withdrawn from Natwest Digital Regular Saver (6.17% over 12m)	£                 45.90
£1850 not withdrawn from RBS DRS (6.17% over 12m)	£               114.15
£3600 not withdrawn from Club Lloyds Monthly Saver (6.25% over 3m)	£                 56.25
£600 not withdrawn from FD Regular Saver (7% over 8m)	£                 28.00
£900 not withdrawn from Gatehouse Regular Saver (7% over 11m)	£                 57.75
£306 not withdrawn from Nationwide Regular Saver (8% over 7m)	£                 14.28
£1400 newly saved in the natwest/RBS DRS using the round up trick (6.17% over 18m)	£               129.57
Additional interest from drip feeding into higher interest reg savers	Hard to quantify
Additional interest from wherever I move the regular savers after they mature	Hard to quantify
Conservative calculation - assuming after each reg saver matures it earns 4% until March 2025 then nothing	£               124.10
Total interest gained (conservative estimate)	£               570.00
Profit	£               511.81
Non monetary benefits
Ability to save £8k into LISA without reducing my savings amount	Peace of mind, 2k bonus
Non monetary downsides
Risks of variable accounts lowering rates and reducing return	Gatehouse, Natwest, RBS, Nationwide could return less
Damage to credit report (how long would this last?) Minimum payments - only 1%/month. for the first 2/3 months I could also offset these by stoozing more	Hard to quantify, I think not much Not much I think?

So about £510 profit and thats on the low side - not accounting for drip feeding (between all the regular savers I have excluding the natwest/RBS right now I can shuffle about £1450/month into all of them, so thatll add about 1% to that moneys interest) and the fact some of the money will earn more than a years interest that I use to pay off the Nationwide. So £500 isnt a life changing amount of money I suppose but its definitely not nothing, its almost a whole months rent for free for me. And theres also the psychological impact of having more money in my LISA while still having some savings to rely on. Which I am probably overweighing but it does exist. I suppose what I should really weigh it against is what the costs of the downsides would be if I could quantify that, would it be more than £500, in which case theres no point. But im struggling to see that the downsides would actually be that bad. Also this is assuming I havent severely miscalculated which is definitely possible.

Thanks for the tip on the minimum payment flag by the way, I didnt know that was a thing.