Interest Free Balance Transfer

FrancisBegbie

Hi, 

I have £15k debt interest free across three companies until Summer  2026 that I will be unable to pay off by then . 

What are the chances I will be able to interest free balance transfer these amounts closer to Summer 2026?

Am I going to end up in a mess ?

CliveOfIndia

Who can say?  It depends largely on your personal circumstances and your credit history.  As well as the financial landscape in general.

Any lender will look at your income, your existing debt, your credit history, and make a decision based upon the facts in conjunction with their own lending criteria.

It also depends somewhat on where the debt is sitting at the moment.  If it's on standard credit cards then doing a BT to another card(s) is a possibility, subject to acceptance.

All that aside, it's important to bear in mind that transferring balances does little address the actual debt itself, it merely punts it down the road for a while.  And there could well come a time where you find that no more BT offers are available to you.  You say that you'd be looking to move the debts in Summer 2026 - that gives you a year and a half to knuckle down and starting to hammer the debts down.  I think that would probably be a far more prudent approach than just banking on being able to transfer them next year.  Filling out an SOA can be an excellent first step to seeing how your financial position looks.

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/financecalculators/soa.php

EssexHebridean

First things first - the SOA is definitely needed so you can see where you stand and what you are likely to be able to do in terms of these debts. It's a great way of checking your budget and making sure that you don't need to tweak anything.

How do you currently have the payments to these 0% cards set up - as just the minimums? If so then you can make a better impact on reducing the balances by setting the payments to be a little above the minimums and then letting that run - it will be easier for you on the budgeting side, but also mean that each month you pay a little more off. You should only ever do this with cards you are not spending on though, and also be aware of any correspondence saying that the percentage for the minimums is increasing as you may then need to increase your set DD amount. 

You could use an eligibility calculator like the one on the MSE credit club to get an idea of how you might be seen by lenders, too.