Juggling stooze cards and purchase cards

Bargain_Rzl

Just a quick question which I can't seem to get my head around.

I have three stooze cards (Egg, Capital One, Halifax) and one purchases card (Sainsburys). I am planning an application to Virgin very soon to take over the balance from my Egg card and (0% ends on 1 September) and probably also my Capital One card as the 0% ends in early November and I would prefer to have the money on as few cards as possible, as well as keeping my card applications to a minimum.

My Sainsburys card has a credit limit of £3500 and the balance is currently just under £2000. The 0% rate lasts until March next year but I envisage that the credit limit will only last me until October/November.

Would I be better off:

1. transferring some of my Sainsburys card balance to my next stooze card now (thus opening up a bit more available credit and enabling me to spend on it until March), then in readiness for March, applying for 1 new stooze card (to take the Sainsburys card balance) and 1 new purchases card (to replace the Sainsburys card),

or

2. waiting until I have almost maxed it out, in October/November, and then applying for a new purchases card, keeping the balance on the Sainsburys card until March when I would apply for a new stoozing card?

Thanks all!

Clariman

Although you describe your Sainsbury's card as a 'purchasing' card, I'd describe it as a slow-stooze card, because you are exploiting the 0% on purchases to build up your stooz pot. While this kind of card can contribute to a stooz pot, it does it very slowly. Although you have a credit limit of £3500 on the card, on average you will probably only have something like a £1800 to £2000 balance on average earning between £90 and £100 for the whole year before tax. Contrast that to a straight 0% on BTs card which you can exploit on day 1 - where a £3500 limit for a year would earn you about £175.

I think these type of cards can play a part in building a stooz pot if you have no SBT card, but given that you have SBT cards (Egg and, hopefully, Virgin) you can exploit any decent 0% on BT cards that may be around. So my personal view is that I would BT the sainsbury's balance to another card and either (a) drop the sainsbury's card and get a £3500 card somewhere else thay you can stooz from day 1 or (b) continue to purchases on it.

In addition to my stooz cards I have a couple of what I call "purchase" cards, but these are for day to day spending and attract 0.5% to 2% cashback. I pay these off in full every month. These have much lower credit limits than my stooz cards so I don't waste available credit which could be used for stoozing !

HTH
Clariman

Nick_C_4

or

3. Increase the credit limit on the Sainsbury's card.

I'm in a similar position - I'm going to hit my credit limit on the Sainsbury's card half-way through the year. I'll see if they'll increase my limit first. I would have thought they'd go for it - I assume the point of the 0% offer is that you get to the end of it and don't pay it off. The higher the balance at the end, the better for them, surely? If I can't increase the credit limit I'll transfer the balance then carry on spending.

Bargain_Rzl

One reason why I am currently going down the "slow stooze" route instead of the cashback route is the way my savings are currently structured. I have £6k in a mini cash ISA, 9k in the A&L Online Saver, and 2k in an Egg fixed rate bond which matures at the end of September. Total 17k. Of this, only just over £3k is actual savings and the other £14k is a combination of stooze money and short-term savings (i.e. money I happen to have left over at present because I budget on an annual basis and my spending is generally weighted towards the end of the year).

By December payday I intend to fully "own" the £6k in the ISA (I have made a deal with myself that I will not touch the interest from the ISA, and I exclude it from my stoozing total), then by the end of March I should be in a position to put £3k in a 2006/07 ISA and start a Halifax Regular Savings Account which, when it clears itself out a year later, will become the basis of my 2007/08 ISA. About June 2006 I reckon I should be in a position to "own" everything I have tied up in either ISAs or "inaccessible" savings. Until then, every spare penny of salary is going into the A&L account, while I spend on my 0% Sainsburys card. After that I can move back to cards which get paid off in full each month - i.e. cashback cards