Please help me - Don't know where else to go?

GeorgeUK

Hi Pixie

Can you tell me how much the minimum payment is for the LOB offer? Is it 2.25%? My minimum with HBOS was lower than the amount for my normal card payment.

1636.72 take home pay

850.00 household bills
255.64 secured loan
25.00 virgin
112.50 if Barclaycard is 2.25% (possibly less if you could only transfer 90% of limit)
1243.14 Total before remainder of MBNA debt

1636.72-1243.14=393.58 remaining.

6500@3% = 195 minimum for MBNA

Can you double check this as it seems that you can afford the minimum payments and even if you are paying 15.9% will still be able to make a dent in the debt. I think the interest on this is about £80. And this is before your PPI money is refunded.

There appear to be a few 0% cards with a monthly minimum of around 2.25% if you still feel it will be a struggle at 3%. The stoozing site suggests that the Abbey credit card is 2.25% for the 1st month only and £5 minimum thereafter but i cannot confirm this from the abbey site. Hopefully someone else will be able to comment.

Try to stay strong Pixie. If you didn't get any support last time, you can always come here for some (support). Try not to dwell on what has happened too much. You can't change that nad need to focus on what is going to happen in the future.

Take care
George

Pixie983

GeorgeUK wrote: »

Hi Pixie

Can you tell me how much the minimum payment is for the LOB offer? Is it 2.25%? My minimum with HBOS was lower than the amount for my normal card payment.

1636.72 take home pay

850.00 household bills
255.64 secured loan
25.00 virgin
112.50 if Barclaycard is 2.25% (possibly less if you could only transfer 90% of limit)
1243.14 Total before remainder of MBNA debt

1636.72-1243.14=393.58 remaining.

6500@3% = 195 minimum for MBNA

Can you double check this as it seems that you can afford the minimum payments and even if you are paying 15.9% will still be able to make a dent in the debt. I think the interest on this is about £80. And this is before your PPI money is refunded.

There appear to be a few 0% cards with a monthly minimum of around 2.25% if you still feel it will be a struggle at 3%. The stoozing site suggests that the Abbey credit card is 2.25% for the 1st month only and £5 minimum thereafter but i cannot confirm this from the abbey site. Hopefully someone else will be able to comment.

Try to stay strong Pixie. If you didn't get any support last time, you can always come here for some (support). Try not to dwell on what has happened too much. You can't change that nad need to focus on what is going to happen in the future.

Take care
George

Hi George,

Thanks for this. I think the BCard minimum repayment is 2%? My minimum payment next month (now that the BT has gone through) is £104, this is on £4500 which was 90% of my limit. I have already setup a DD to take the minimum payment on this and my Virgin card.

I will have a look at the Abbey card - will be worth transferring if repayments are low, suppose I could call them to confirm before applying. I will wait for the PPI money to come back before I try tackle the problem of the FP loan. I think the PPI policy has a bearing on the settlement figure anyway so best to wait until it's been cancelled? (I think - or am I just making that up completely!)

I was all for getting a loan to pay off the c.cards but I think you are all right - I just will not learn this way and you don't actually see the balance decreasing (which always helps with motivation ). However I do think it might be a good idea to transfer the FP loan to a personal loan as 11% interest over another 12 years - pains me to think about it. :mad:

Just to add to this - I have just done a very quick check on Tesco loans and although I'm not sure what my settlement figure is with FP i'm guessing it's going to be somewhere around £16,000 maybe a bit more. Anyway a loan with Tesco for £16,000 over 10 years, monthly repayments are £194.73, APR is 8.1% and total amount repayable would be £23,368. This is just a quick check I've done - obviously I would look into it further but surely this is better than the FP loan at 11.5% interest over another 12 years? and the interest rate is variable - it was 12.4% until a few weeks ago! Plus it wouldn't be secured on the house.

GeorgeUK

Hi Pixie

No idea about the PPI, but i posted on the stozing site and they agree that the min payment is 2.25% and not only £5 as had been suggested. Pity that

I still think trying for another 0% card is the best way forward - have a play about with the snoball calculator to see how much you may save, how long it may take and how much the minimum payments may be.

It all depends on the limit you get on any 0% card, but i think as long as you have not had 3 credit checks in the last 6 months, you should be able to at least halve the amount of interest you are paying on the MBNA card.

You can do this!

Pixie983

GeorgeUK wrote: »

Hi Pixie

No idea about the PPI, but i posted on the stozing site and they agree that the min payment is 2.25% and not only £5 as had been suggested. Pity that

I still think trying for another 0% card is the best way forward - have a play about with the snoball calculator to see how much you may save, how long it may take and how much the minimum payments may be.

It all depends on the limit you get on any 0% card, but i think as long as you have not had 3 credit checks in the last 6 months, you should be able to at least halve the amount of interest you are paying on the MBNA card.

You can do this!

Thanks George - I am really starting to feel like I can do this now!! I don't think I have had 3 credit checks in last 6 months? The Virgin card is one - that was last month but other than that don't think so? Does increasing my overdraft count as a credit check as I may have done that a couple of times towards the end of last year? I think the Abbey card is the longest 0% deal at 15 months so I will try applying for one tomorrow. Also I am going to sort through a load of stuff this weekend to see what I can Ebay to raise a bit more cash!

In_Search_Of_Me

Thats the spirit...also look at the interest on proposed loan ...seriously when I was at my worst I didnt even think twice when I signed up for a loan that cost me 8000 in interest! mad.

Pixie983

In_Search_Of_Me wrote: »

Thats the spirit...also look at the interest on proposed loan ...seriously when I was at my worst I didnt even think twice when I signed up for a loan that cost me 8000 in interest! mad.

I know there is going to be quite a bit of interest on any loan, but my thinking is it's better to have a personal loan that a secured one? The interest rate on the FP loan is currently 11.5% but it's variable, the Tesco one that I looked at is 8.1% fixed so I will still pay a lot of interest on this over 10 years but it's far less than what I would pay to FP over the remaining 12 years if I stay with them? Need to get a settlement figure & look into this in more detail once I have got the PPI back. Got a letter from the FOS this morning saying he has received my acceptance of the offer so just got to wait for FP to contact me now to resolve.

Also with the 0% c.card - Egg are doing 0% for 15 months on BT's and minimum payments are 2% of outstanding balance (slightly less than Abbey). However I know my OH has an Egg card so would this affect me being accepted or the limit I am given as it's the same address? Might be a silly question but obviously I want to give myself the best chance of getting a higher credit limit so I can transfer more from the 15.9% mbna card to the 0%.

Pixie983

Some good news! I posted over on the credit card board for help with best BT offers with low minimum payments and somebody kindly told me about the Halifax card which is 0% for 13 months with 1% minimum repayments :T.

So I applied for it this morning and was accepted with an estimated limit of £3000 :jI know it won't clear all of the MBNA card but it all helps and when I get the PPI money back I will use it to reduce the MBNA card should end up with about £2500 on it after that, this is the one I will be overpaying on when I can!

Also I called Orange and got them to reduce my tariff for my mobile - got it down from £35 a month to £17 :j. I get less minutes but still get unlimited texts and anyway when I looked at my bill I wasn't even using half of the minutes I was getting on my plan!

RAS

Good

The more low percent you can get the better.

Join a challenge or two?

Pixie983

RAS wrote: »

Join a challenge or two?

I have just joined The "Loose Change Pays Your Debt 2009" Challenge.
My first challenge - how exciting!

I was trying to find the challenge for NSD's? I'm sure I have seen one before or did I imagine it?!

In_Search_Of_Me

Well done pixie! Re the loan I agree the unsecured better than secured BUT check the terms and conditions...ie for my loans (not secured) they were front loaded which means I have to pay interest first so no benefit paying them early...
Well done on the bt but dont let it lull you into a false sence of security.
Yes there is a NSDchallenge on DFW somewhere ...must join it myself as theres been slippage of late!
Also grocery budget on old style boards is great plus o/s ingeneral for saving on cleaning stuff etc...
Any more thoughts on telling oh?