Help - green & new to cards!

Ricko_2

Hi - always been wary of credit cards & never had them - always saved up for things before I buy - but anyway - We were going to get a loan to do a few major things on our house. Well to add to our existing mortgage they were going to charge us £550 set up fee! We have 15 yrs left. So next best - to borrow money on card at 0% and transfer after 12mnths if we havn't paid it off. My main question & sorry for my ignorance....to pay for a couple of the things cash will be the best bargaining tool, if you know what I mean, what do I do for this? If I get cash from the card - is this different to purchases? If so anyone suggest alternatives.
Many Thanks from a newbie

Rich

oldagetraveller

I think you will find the card is 0% for purchases only and cash advances are treated differently. There will be a fee for those. Also check your card ts & cs VERY carefully as to what if any effect cash advances may have on the 0% element or anything else.

CLAPTON

Withdrawing cash from a credit card is very expensive
usually you are charged 2.5-3% when you withdraw and
you pay the 'cash' rate of interest typically 25% from the moment you withdraw and
if you have several different types of trnasactions (e.g. cash withdrawal and purchases) then any payments you make go towards the lowest interest types leaving you paying the highest interest

so thats a no-no

You can try to get a 0% BT card which allows BT to your current account i.e. the MBNA stable of CCs and Egg cards

or you can try to get a 0% on purchases CC but then you may find tradesmen wont accept CC payments

In any event, if you don't already have a CC then you may find you can't get the best cards as you have no history of managing CCs.
If you do get a card you may only get a small credit limit.

Whether 550 is unreasonable depends upon how much you want to borrow and their APR... you haven't given these vital bits of information