Best Balance Transfers Discussion Area

dollyte

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karenkaren_2

Hi all, can anyone give me advice on the best way to sort my debt please?

I have approx £1300 on a cc and £1400 on an overdraft. Is there any way of putting these together in a sort of balance transfer? I read that with Virgin's 0% card I could pay my overdraft, but i was refused a virgin card.

The other problem is i have no current income other than Job Seeker's Allowance. Could that be why I have been declined? And if I were to get a temporary job am I more likely to be accepted? Should I apply for a different 0% balance transfer card?

Sorry for all the questions, I am clueless! Thanks for any advice.

CannyJock

karenkaren wrote: »

Hi all, can anyone give me advice on the best way to sort my debt please?

I have approx £1300 on a cc and £1400 on an overdraft. Is there any way of putting these together in a sort of balance transfer? I read that with Virgin's 0% card I could pay my overdraft, but i was refused a virgin card.

The other problem is i have no current income other than Job Seeker's Allowance. Could that be why I have been declined? And if I were to get a temporary job am I more likely to be accepted? Should I apply for a different 0% balance transfer card?

Sorry for all the questions, I am clueless! Thanks for any advice.

Most likely your employment situation. Getting a job will help, but only once you've been in it for a while. What's the APR on your CC and your overdraft, how much are you paying to your CC and overdraft each month, when did you apply for the Virgin card and what's your monthly disposable income?

karenkaren_2

Im paying 21% (eeek!) on my cc and i think 18% on my od. I live with my parents so most of the £60 pw Jobseekers allowance is 'disposable', technically. I dont really have a set amount I pay regularly, I just pay what i can when i can, for example after xmas i paid 100 to my cc but more often i just have to pay the minimum monthly payment. i have applied for lots of temp jobs so will hopefully get something soon.

CannyJock

karenkaren wrote: »

Im paying 21% (eeek!) on my cc and i think 18% on my od. I live with my parents so most of the £60 pw Jobseekers allowance is 'disposable', technically. I dont really have a set amount I pay regularly, I just pay what i can when i can, for example after xmas i paid 100 to my cc but more often i just have to pay the minimum monthly payment. i have applied for lots of temp jobs so will hopefully get something soon.

Ouch. No easy fix here. Nothing you can do on your own without parents help as far as I can see.

In theory you could speak to your bank, get them to drastically reduce your overdraft rate, then get them to increase the overdraft and use the funds to pay the credit card. Real long shot though - still, costs nothing to ask. They may prefer to offer you a loan to clear the credit card and overdraft and have your parents act as guarantors on the loan - if your parents are okay with this, it might be worth putting to the bank as an alternative.

Your best option is probably for your parents to apply for a card and transfer the balance of your own card to it. If they applied for the Virgin card, they could also arrange a "money transfer" to their current account and they can then transfer the money to you and clear the overdraft. The big risk in this option is if the Virgin balance isn't paid by the time the 16 month period is up, it'll then be in your parents name and the interest rate will be booted up to something like 35%.

Both these options are only short-term solutions though, without additional income you're always going to be living from week to week. They also assume that you don't then use your own card or overdraft going forward as you don't have the means to repay them.

black_squirrel_2

I'm currently a holder of an Abbey Zero card... I always figured when I got my next new card its name would change to Santander Zero (given the "Abbey" name is vanishing).

However, given the news of the "zero fees" balance transfer on the Santander Zero... Im interested. I know you wont be able to transfer from other Santander cards (ie the Abbey Zero).... but I dont need to do that... though I have other cards I wish to balance transfer.

I'm also an A&L customer, so should qualify. Just wondering if Abbey Zero and Santander Zero are 2 separate cards and I will be able to apply.... or whether I will need to shut down my Abbey Zero and then reapply for the Santander one.... or whether what I wish to do is simply impossible!

I would email and ask and report back.. but I see I dont have that option from my Abbey Zero online account.... and dont fancy explaining all this over the phone! any ideas?

blurred

Right, I could do with a little advice from the experts on this one. I've let my credit cards get the better of me of late, much to my chagrin as I'm usually quite good at keeping up with my finances and not getting too messed up. At the moment, I've got around £900 on an Egg 0% deal (recently switched), approx £2.8k on an HSBC one which is at a shocking 26.9% APR and around £4.8k on a Virgin card that's currently at 15.95% (an ex BT card that's long since gone past it's 0% term).

Naturally I want to shift as much of the debt from HSBC as possible. A few things to bear in mind, though - I'm now earning less than I was a year ago by a good few grand, and as such I want to keep repayments as low as possible and can't afford to overpay by much (I'm trying at the moment to make small overpayments each month, even if it's 20-30 quid). I've tried to be good and not apply for much credit over the past year or two, is my best bet to just apply for the Abbey and shift as much as I can on to that one?

When I went to Egg they only gave me £1k limit (which I can now request to be increased) - are Abbey likely to only give me a similarly small 0% limit, or are they quite generous with their limits?

Would I be best off applying for a new Abbey card as well as increasing my limit on Egg? That would mean only two cards instead of 3 (if I could get enough credit), although I'd then be paying interest on the non-0% balance that I'd transferred to Egg.

Further complication, while I still own a house, I've moved (work purposes) and rent out my old property, while renting in my new location. While this is perhaps a good thing (the rent can add to my 'gross annual income' for application purposes) could it cause issues because I can't say that I own the property that I'll be applying from. I know the credit check should see that I have a mortgage, but will this adversely affect things?

Any advice/comments/suggestions would be most helpful.

CannyJock

black_squirrel wrote: »

I'm currently a holder of an Abbey Zero card... I always figured when I got my next new card its name would change to Santander Zero (given the "Abbey" name is vanishing).

However, given the news of the "zero fees" balance transfer on the Santander Zero... Im interested. I know you wont be able to transfer from other Santander cards (ie the Abbey Zero).... but I dont need to do that... though I have other cards I wish to balance transfer.

I'm also an A&L customer, so should qualify. Just wondering if Abbey Zero and Santander Zero are 2 separate cards and I will be able to apply.... or whether I will need to shut down my Abbey Zero and then reapply for the Santander one.... or whether what I wish to do is simply impossible!

I would email and ask and report back.. but I see I dont have that option from my Abbey Zero online account.... and dont fancy explaining all this over the phone! any ideas?

AFAIK Abbey Zero and Santander Zero are identical cards now. Others are trying the cancel and reapply option but no reported successes yet - decision is not immediate when you apply (just helped a family member apply for one).

CannyJock

blurred wrote: »

£900 on an Egg 0% £1k limit
£2.8k on an HSBC at 26.9% APR
£4.8k on a Virgin at 15.95%

is my best bet to just apply for the Abbey and shift as much as I can on to that one? are Abbey likely to only give me a similarly small 0% limit, or are they quite generous with their limits?

Further complication, while I still own a house, I've moved (work purposes) and rent out my old property, while renting in my new location. While this is perhaps a good thing (the rent can add to my 'gross annual income' for application purposes) could it cause issues because I can't say that I own the property that I'll be applying from.

Egg Money can be tight with credit limits beacuse you can prepay onto the card. Egg Credit Card not especially tight so that's an alarm bell there.

I'd apply for the Abbey card and ignore Egg for now. If you're on electoral register at your rental address, you just put down both addresses as places lived at in past x years. Ignore the mortgage bit - effectively it's working like a BTL mortgage for you just now - you're currently renting although you do own a property would be my view you can detail this in a letter to appeal a rejection or to appeal a low credit limit if it comes to it.

In your position I'd be making an application every 3 months until I'd been accepted for enough 0% cards to get your 7.6k onto 0%.

Meanwhile make min payments only on Egg and Virgin and put max possible into clearing HSBC.

blurred

CannyJock wrote: »

Egg Money can be tight with credit limits beacuse you can prepay onto the card. Egg Credit Card not especially tight so that's an alarm bell there.

It's an Egg Credit Card, not Egg Money, but ok.

CannyJock wrote: »

I'd apply for the Abbey card and ignore Egg for now...In your position I'd be making an application every 3 months until I'd been accepted for enough 0% cards to get your 7.6k onto 0%...Meanwhile make min payments only on Egg and Virgin and put max possible into clearing HSBC.

Roughly what I'd come to the conclusion of (have been overpaying on HSBC for a month or two), so it's nice to have that confirmed by someone else's logic! Cheers for that.