what to do - help needed

RAS

loobie wrote: »

CC limits are:

First Direct - 5100
Amazon - 3200
Sky - 3000

We can overpay on the loan without penalty. - great, make absolutely sure that doing so will reduce the monthly payments and if it will...

This requires great discipline, but if you can do it, it will start to reduce your outgoings. What you need to do is pay a few things that would normally come straight out of the bank account on the CCs and then pay exactly the same amount immediately off the loan.

if you want to see the impact, pay with the snowball on www.whatsthecost.com. it will not reduce the time take to pay off the loan but you would reduce the amount of interest paid by £2700 over that time.

Shift £200 from the loan to the Sky card - reducing the APR from 11.7% to 0%
Shift £200 from the loan to First Direct card reducing the APR from 11.7% to 4.95 %
and other £1300 over time from the loan to the Amazon card, reducing the cost from 11.7% to 6.96%

loobie wrote: »

Mortgage is interest only, but fixed rate coming to end in November

Loan Ins - was £84, but found it for £21

Life Ins - it's for Dh, and is tied into the mortgage. We can change mortgage providers, but if we cancel the life insurance policy we ahve to pay a penalty.

I think you might have a case for mis-selling on both of these? How mch have you already paid out?

it may be worth paying the penalty. At worst, when your fix ends, reduce the insurances to reducing term insurance and do it independant of the martgage company. Those should cover the increase in your mortgage costs, although you have a decent LTV rate.

loobie

How do I move money from the loan onto credit cards?

As far as the PPI is concerned, we never paid of the £84 a month loan ins because I found it cheaper straight away.

Life Ins - 60.31 is life ins, and 31.61 is for ASU. We have been paying it out since September 2005. I called the mortgage company yesterday, and they said that we might have paid enough to get out of the policy early without paying the penalty (£850) They will be getting back to me in a couple of days.

RAS

Hi loobie

What is ASU?

RAS

Loobie

You will not be able to do "balance transfers", so all you can do is to be creative in the way that you pay for things over the next few months.

What would you normally pay out on debt card, or straight out of your normal bank account?

loobie

ASU is Accident Sickness and Unemployment cover.

"What would you normally pay out on debt card, or straight out of your normal bank account?" - maybe I'm being thick, but i don't understand what you mean here?

RAS

Sorry, am doing this in between jobs.

Say you normally pay the supermarket bill on your debit card? That costs £100, so you pay it on the 0% (assuming you can do this without losing the 0%). Then you pay £100 out of your bank account towards the loan, since you are allowed to overpay.

The sum in your bank account is the same, your total debt stays the same, but you are paying less interest.

epsilondraconis

Life Ins - 60.31 is life ins, and 31.61 is for ASU.

The £60.31 component of this is very very high. The £31.61 for ASU is probably about right. Definitely read through your insurance docs to understand what the £60.31 cost is covering.

I would suggest that the £60.31 is both life insurance and critical illness. Assuming this is the case, you may be able to remove the critical illness portion of the cover and leave only the life insurance without incurring the penalty. Whatever you do, don't just cancel this policy without at least having a life insurance policy set up to cover the mortgage (I expect you already know that, its just I didn't want you to overlook it when you are trying to sort everything out).

Edit:

P.S. I'm not advocating you cancel the critical illness cover (if indeed that is what you have). Obviously these decisions need to be made by you and your husband and will be based upon your current circumstances and requirements. I'm only indicating that you are very likely to find it cheaper elsewhere (provided you don't have the penalty when you switch).