Balance transfers

Bug1920

Hi am wondering if anyone can help me please, I’m looking at funding a surgery privately, it may cost around £10.000, I have an offer with my bank for a personal loan but after paying off current loan and paying for this years holiday it will leave me around £2000 for the surgery deposit, I have 2 credit cards both with same bank and I don’t owe anything on them, 1 has a limit of £7900 and the other has £4500, my question is could I use these to pay for surgery and then do a balance transfer to a 0% interest card, if so would it be wise to apply for the balance transfer card BEFORE spending on these cards or after, I’m worried that if I spend on these cards before applying it might affect my credit score so much so that I won’t find a balance transfer card good enough, currently I have a very good score with Experian and a good score with the others, any help and advice would be really appreciated, thanks again:) 

Brie

Frankly I think it unlikely that you can apply for a card and get a balance limit high enough for a £10k BT.  You might do it with more than one assuming your credit history is good enough.

As I understand it it doesn't matter too much if you have spent on the cards or not.  They don't know if you're going to go out and spend a huge amount on each card the day after you get the new one.  But if they are maxed they might be suspicious of course.  

Check what else is showing on your credit history.  Any CCJs you weren't aware of?  Phone contracts, big TV package spends, motor insurance paid monthly - these are all credit agreements that will be taken into consideration.  The banks don't see your credit score as that's just a made up number trying to make you sign up and pay for a service to tell you when it's going up or down.  

Hopefully the surgery isn't so urgent that you can't clear the holiday debts and so be able to better afford for the medical treatmeant more easily.

Altior

Consider eligibility checks for MT offers. 

dumpster_fire2025

Altior said:

Consider eligibility checks for MT offers. 

Those would have the same limit problems.

If the OP is affluent enough to get a £10k limit on a brand new credit card then they probably wouldn't need to borrow £8k, or at least would be able to pay it off quickly enough that the interest on a loan would be irrelevant.

I would suggest the OP pays the loan off and doesn't go on holiday. Either the surgery is so important that a holiday is the last thing on their mind or it's not that important so they can save for it.

Altior

dumpster_fire2025 said:

Altior said:

Consider eligibility checks for MT offers. 

Those would have the same limit problems.

If the OP is affluent enough to get a £10k limit on a brand new credit card then they probably wouldn't need to borrow £8k, or at least would be able to pay it off quickly enough that the interest on a loan would be irrelevant.

I would suggest the OP pays the loan off and doesn't go on holiday. Either the surgery is so important that a holiday is the last thing on their mind or it's not that important so they can save for it.

It's not all or nothing. They are allowed to get more than one card as well. 

I don't agree that it's dependent on 'affluence', there are multiple factors. There are plenty of seemingly affluent people who post on the dfw board looking for help. 

Anyway it won't do any harm for the OP to run an EC on MTs and see what's possibly on the table. 

vacheron

I would do a soft search comparison for a balance transfer, (or money transfer) card first to see if you are likely to be offered cards with a high enough limit. 

If you do, I would apply for the card first (for security), but be aware of the following:

• There is a time limit after opening the card (usually about 3 months) during which 0% balance transfers are permitted. If using a balance transfer card, you would need to make sure that the surgery is paid for on the other cards, and then transferred to the new card within this timescale.

• If using a balance transfer, ensure the surgery accepts credit cards, or doesn't apply a charge to use them. 
  
  
• You will have to pay a (balance or money) transfer fee - anything from 0-4% of the funds transferred.

• The 0% period could also last anything from 9 to 36 months, after which you would need to pay back the money, find another card, or be hit with 20-30% interest rates, so be VERY honest and ask yourself how you will be able to save this £10k during that 9-26 month period and not be tempted to spend it, otherwise things can turn very bad very quickly!

MEM62

How essential is the surgery?  Does the institution performing the surgery have any kind of finance plan of their own?  

Nasqueron

dumpster_fire2025 said:

Altior said:

Consider eligibility checks for MT offers. 

Those would have the same limit problems.

If the OP is affluent enough to get a £10k limit on a brand new credit card then they probably wouldn't need to borrow £8k, or at least would be able to pay it off quickly enough that the interest on a loan would be irrelevant.

I would suggest the OP pays the loan off and doesn't go on holiday. Either the surgery is so important that a holiday is the last thing on their mind or it's not that important so they can save for it.

Probably less likely these days but AmEx / Nectar gave me £13.5k limit off the bat back in the first iteration of the card, I was on low 20s salary! I agree though that you'd need a good income these days to get such a high limit + assumes they already have high enough limit to pay up the deposit and then the balance

Bug1920

Thank you all for replying, sorry I didn’t see the replies sooner I thought I would get notifications if I had replies so assumed no 1 did, I have quite a good credit score with quite good utilisation of it, so across all my credit cards and catalogs and things I have a limit of £24.000 ( loan not included) but Iv only used £850 so around 3% and Iv not gone much more over this maybe at most 8%, I don’t have any ccj’s but do have a phone contract and tv subscription so I think it will be a no on affordability, I earn around the £30,000 mark give or take and I’m not a home owner, I 100% am not affluent and it’s taken me years to build up my credit profile and I’m very strict with what I spend and only ever use interest free options, the surgery is more of a want for many years then a need and I’m at an age where I think if I don’t do it now I’ll never do it or something else will come up and I’ll end up having to use money on that, at the moment I owe 1 credit card around £600 but I did owe it just under £2000 in September last year but have been paying back £250 a month to get it cleared before the interest free period finished, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, the surgery can be financed with the hospital but it’s either interest free but over a short period like 12mths which I wouldn’t be able to pay all that back in time but then would transfer over to longer period with interest I believe or start with a long period like 60 mths but with a high interest of around 14%, maybe instead of using the credit cards on the surgery I could use 1 to pay for the holiday, so won’t be as much and pay around £7000 off the surgery and take the rest interest free, do a BT on the credit card and plough any extra money on clearing 1 thing 1st. I’ll ring my bank tomorrow and speak to the credit card team and maybe they’ll be able to combine the credit cards and give me a purchase offer maybe I’m not sure. Thanks again for replying, I will check later on if anyone has relied to this comment, thank you again for all the feedback, I have a lot to think about.