Beginning to stooze

TheKDs

I think I can begin. I only have a credit card with lloyds and all I've done so far has been monthly spends and pay that back after the month's interest, so like £5 but I do have a money transfer with it which I've never used for 10 years. How do you apply for these massive amounts of credit MT?  

booneruk

I've been slowly building up a stooze pot by using 0% purchase cards, it's far from immediate though. I put all my day to day spending, bills etc (paying council tax for the entire year up front is one example) on such a credit card and do something productive with the money I have left (Premium bonds, fixed interest savings, ISA savings). I've worked the pot up to over 70k after a few years.

I've paid some of the original cards off using lump sums from my various savings, and I am thinking about taking out some balance transfer cards to extend things before I have to pay another tranche of the original cards off. I'm seeing BT cards with 3% fees and am wondering if these will get cheaper over the next few months as the likelihood of central bank interest rate reductions increases.

edit - I did do a money transfer once, but that was before the interest rate freakout. I think the fee back then was about 2%

TheKDs

Can I ask some really dumb questions? Is that now 70K of interest you've gained or 70k of credit availability? I pay off my credit card the next month. 

booneruk

haha ~70k was my maximum credit utilisation/stooze pot, it was that point where the various providers stopped offering me new cards (I wonder why!!).

I haven't kept tabs on the actual profit being made. I just used the cash I wasn't spending day to day (because all my spending was going on 0% credit cards) over months and years to max premium bonds, put enough in 5year fixed interest savings to max my tax free interest allowance, buy gilts etc.

I've actually run out of bullet proof/tax free avenues to put money into now, so I'm paying more than minimums off my credit cards each month. One day in the next year I should have a credit card balance of zero and have a fair chunk left in my premium bonds, and my 5yr fix.

Would be nice if I could net a big win on premium bonds in the meantime too (though I'm averaging about 5% prizes from them, which is better than average luck I believe)

Was it all worth it? I guess so. I'm happy I started building this stooze pot prior to the interest rate hikes.