New to this, advice MOST welcome!

Silence_2

After spending an afternoon filling in the sites budget planner me and the wife have come to some conclusions and want to put some plans into action.

I owe £4500 on my credit card and she owes £2400 on one and £1700 on a second (she had 2x0% cards as the first wouldn't giver herenough to cover all her debt)

What we want to do is get all the debt in one place, ideally a Citibank 5.9% for the life of the balance card.

What i want to know is will we be able to transfer the 3 amounts onto one card? Should we attempt to get them all onto my existing Capital One card first (I have enough credit available) then move it over?

Any advice would be greatly recieved!

Must just say as well, using the Budget planner was a real eye opener! Not only were we able to see where we were wasting cash we can now plan to cut costs without cutting out life!!

gazza975526570

Your problem may be getting the required credit limit of approx £8500 in the first place - how quick do you plan on paying it off?

Could you move to a 0% deal (or 2) instead?

GeorgeUK

Also have a look at HSBC - 2.9% APR for 2 years

I agree with gazza though - getting the required limit is the tricky part.

I wouldn't transfer the amounts to one card, just to transfer it again later. You are getting a 3% charge each time you do a BT, so you want to do that as little as possible. There shouldn't be a problem transferring from 3 cards to 1 though - as long as you get the required limit.

Silence_2

Nice one , thanks folks I did have a worry that you couldn't transfer amounts from another persons card.

Will certainly have a look at the other offers, we want to pay the debt of asap, 3 years is doable with what we pay out at the moment but with some reworking of our finances another £100 a month would see us clear in 2 years.

One of the things that leapt out at us from the budget planner was over £80 a month on lunches for us whilst at work, packed lunches here we come!

Silence_2

UPDATE:

Just thought i'd let you know how I got on today. After a discussion with MrsSilence we decided we could be credit card tarts and switch from 0% to 0% deal as and when is needed.
Applied just now to Virgin for their 15 month 0% deal listing all bar one of the balance transfers we wish to make (as that one is on a Sony MBNA card so they wouldn't take this one on)
Glad to say we're in with a credit limit of £9100 (I must've been a good boy in another life eh)

Finally can anyone suggest the best way of disposing of the debt on the Sony MBNA, do I bite the bullet and pay for 2 BT's one to my existing card then one to Virgin or is another 0% card under wifes name a better idea?

We did want all the debt in ONE place so we can really focus on busting it down quickly. As I may have mentioned earlier we hope to nail it in approx 2 years, mainly down to increased payments from money saving but also able to throw some big lumps at it from some ebaying.

NickX

Virgin has SBT (Super Balance Transfer) capability, so you can simply transfer the funds to your Bank Account and pay off the other MBNA card from there.

neverdespairgirl

Glad you got a decent limit - I think it's more to do with being good in this life, not a previous one :rotfl:

Make sure you don't spend ANYTHING on the balance transfer card - if you do, the money you pay to the card comes off the 0% BT, and the purchases sit there racking up interest.

GeorgeUK

I think Nickx has cracked it for you Silence. The SBT to your current account (with BT charge) and transfer the cash to your Sony MBNA card (no charge) - then get out the scissors

It might be worthwhile keeping the card with the highest limit open (but empty) as you can get 0% offers on existing cards - if the credit crunch gets tighter, you may need it as they usually don't do another credit check on existing customers.