0% credit to earn interest on savings

Annetortue

Hello,

We are about to purchase our new kitchen. We have been saving for a couple of years and have more than enough to buy it cash. 
However the savings are giving us a nice little return every month and we would like to keep it that way as long as possible.
Could we use a 0% purchase credit card and repay every month using our savings? The issue we had is that the soft eligibility check give us a £1200 credit limit and to be honest we would need 10 times more ! (Kitchen will be around £15000).
Is our idea realistic? Any idea of good credit cards to use for and will the credit limit be higher If we do a proper application with a hard credit check? Thank you

eskbanker

The £1200 figure is solely a representative one used as a default standard, rather than actually being a realistic estimate of what you'd actually get.

Nobody can tell what sort of credit limit you'd be offered, as it'll depend on your wider financial circumstances, but some lenders do give more meaningful estimates prior to committing to an application and search.

CliveOfIndia

As above, £1200 is the standard representative limit that all lenders have to use in their advertising - it's just to allow you to compare like with like.  The actual limit you're offered will depend on how the lender scores you when you make a full application (note that this is their internal score, nothing at all to do with the meaningless score you see on your CRA report).

Some lenders will give you an indicative limit if you use their own (rather than a generic third-party) eligibility checker.  But even that is not guaranteed until you submit an application and they run a full credit check.

There is a useful MSE article that will give you some cards to consider: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/

There are also lots of comparison sites online that will give you options of cards to consider.

To your main point - yes, it's a sound idea in principle.  You may as well earn some interest on your savings whilst paying only the minimum each month to the card.  Just make sure that you make a note of when the promotional rate expires so that you can pay off all the remaining balance.  You may be able to do a Balance Transfer to another 0% card (which may incur a fee), but you must never just assume you'll be able to do so.

The one potential issue is whether your installer will accept credit cards.  If you're buying the goods yourself from a shop, you'll probably be fine.  But if you have an installer who is supplying and fitting everything, many smaller businesses won't accept credit cards - largely due to the fees they get charged by the card issuer.

MyRealNameToo

Annetortue said:

We are about to purchase our new kitchen. We have been saving for a couple of years and have more than enough to buy it cash. 
However the savings are giving us a nice little return every month and we would like to keep it that way as long as possible.
Could we use a 0% purchase credit card and repay every month using our savings? The issue we had is that the soft eligibility check give us a £1,200 credit limit and to be honest we would need 10 times more ! (Kitchen will be around £15,000).
Is our idea realistic? Any idea of good credit cards to use for and will the credit limit be higher If we do a proper application with a hard credit check? Thank you

Have you checked with your preferred kitchen firm if they accept credit cards? The guys my wife wanted to use would only accept CC for the initial deposit and the balance had to be paid by debit card or bank transfer. 

There are some card issuers that will give you an indicative limit via a soft application, similarly I've found that ClearScore for a small number of lenders will also give a limit that tends to be accurate. 

Nasqueron

You could try for a Money Transfer card if the firm won't take a CC. Another option would be a 0% balance transfer card if a purchase card doesn't give enough limit, some sites will give you an accurate estimate from the soft check, I can't remember which comparison site did it, might be the Meerkats but there was a thread about it on here a few months ago, where the estimated limit was usually right 

MEM62

Annetortue said:

The issue we had is that the soft eligibility check give us a £1200 credit limit and to be honest we would need 10 times more ! (Kitchen will be around £15000).

Unless you have a really high income, you are unlikely to obtain a credit limit of £12K on a new card.