Credit card v remortgage

magic_genie

I read above in the offset mortgages post of a man who I quote:

"one other point is i did a super balance transfer on a credit card and the funds are also in the offset account saving me money as i pay 0% on it and keep switching it"

borrowed money on a credit card to put in his current account to reduce payments on his offset mortgage.

I am just about to remortgage my flat in order to release funds (@8k) so that I can buy another house. Now, I'm pretty clued up on most things but not credit cards.

Can you actually borrow money on credit cards, not purchase anything, but borrow money? If so, I wouldn't have to remortgage my flat, I could borrow the 8k I need on a credit card.

Thanks for reading, hope to hear from you
kind regards
Alex

martinpike

Yep, that's precisely the situation Alex.

I don't know your personal circumstances, but there are lots of people on here who have 'stoozed' (that's the name for it, it seems) much larger sums than £8k.

I suggest you read Martin's articles on the subject under Credit Cards on the followinng link.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/creditcards

Cheers, Martin.

YorkshireBoy

In order to benefit from offset mortages, it's widely recognised that you need to have at least 50% of the mortgage amount in savings, depending on your tax stuation. One way around this is to use "stoozed" funds, ie use someone elses money.

However, one major drawback is that many of the CC deals involve you switching at the end of 6/9 months etc. If these deals dry up (a possibility with recent developments), or you can't get sufficient credit limits on new cards, there is a danger that you will have a "higher" interest rate offset mortgage with not enough savings to offset against it. You may then be forced to wait until the end of a deal before changing lenders, and incurring other costs such as legal, surveying, and product application fees.

I wouldn't go down the offset route myself (and we have substantial stoozed funds! - albeit with a relatively small mortgage on an =BOE rate)

YorkshireBoy

magic_genie wrote:

Can you actually borrow money on credit cards, not purchase anything, but borrow money? If so, I wouldn't have to remortgage my flat, I could borrow the 8k I need on a credit card.

As well as the information on this site, there is a step-by-step guide on https://www.stoozing.com, specifically at http://www.stoozing.com/full.htm