Attempt at losing the cards, advice please.

Doesitburn

Hi folks,

I'm after a bit of advice to help me lose the cards of doom as at the minute i'm hardly denting them.
I've just acquired a new barclay card with a 2.9% bt handling fee and 14 month interest free with a paltry limit of £850, better than a kick in the teeth though . Basically i'm looking for advice on which debt to transfer to this card, be it partial or full from the list below.

Card

---

Limit----balance

---

Min Payment

---

monthly interest %
Capital one ---£2200---£515.73

---

£25.78

---

2.332
Tesco

---

£3300---£1747.87

---

£52

---

1.5
MBNA

---

£1700---£1403.37

---

£19.88

---

1.019
Virgin

---

£3800---£1519.01

---

£39.69

---

2.07

At the moment due to work circumstances, reduced pay due to botched surgery and looking at a lay off of over a year i've got about £170 free a month to pay these with and its quite disheartening to realise its just covering interest. What I propose to do is transfer either the capital one or virgin card onto the barclay as it has the worst interest then fill the remainder with a bit from the virgin card assuming I go with the cap one transfer. My next step (which I should probably do first but that would involve phoning to see what the transfer rates are like on the cards) is to try a shuffle in an attempt to cut interest rates. If anyones got a better idea i'd love to hear it or is my plan sound? Also which one should I focus on when its transferred, the one with the most interest or the barclay card? Basically i've been down this road before with the new card to transfer onto and bought crap instead so this time i'm determined not to do it again!

Thanks.

Needcash_3

Hi

Not an expert myself, but I would transfer all of the Capital one and the rest I'd take off the Virgin one as that's the next highest rate.

Once you have your 0% in place, I would overpay on the others to get them down and make minimum payments on the 0%.

Use the Snowball too to work out the best ways of paying these off ... I think it's www.whatsthecost.com .... will default to dollars but you can change currency by clicking on the union jack icon on the right.

hope this helps
NC

P.S. I just did the Barclays thing too. Make sure you set up a DD and don't miss or underpay, they can take the 0% off you if you do

Seaxwyn

HI Doesitburn, Welcome to MSE

I would transfer the Capital One plus £300-odd of the Virgin balance to the new card. Then phone Capital One and say you want to close the account unless they have any good balance transfer offers. They may then give you a good rate and you can transfer the rest of the Virgin balance. Then ask Virgin for a bt rate etc etc. This worked for me in the past.

Other than card shuffling, there may well be more you can do to reduce your outgoings and improve your situation. See the 'sticky' Newbies thread for advice and how to post a SOA.

Doesitburn

Thanks for the advice guys. Having just phoned Capital one a balance transfer from the Virgin to them is a big no no at 2.33% pm, they weren't having any of it, so i'll empty the card and send a cancellation request and then concentrate on the paying the Virgin card after consulting the snowballer which was kindly linked.