I don't understand how they work, correctly owe around £1300 on my credit card (owned by that Spannish bank) and I want to clear it by the end of the year.
I am paying probably over £150 a year interest so a 0% card would save me a lot of money but when I have looked at credit cards most say this:-
18.9% APR on transferred balances
Does that mean that the APR will be 18.9% on the balance which I transfer? If so I don't get the point as my APR is already lower than that.
|
>> 18.9% APR on transferred balances
>>
have you tried www.moneysavingexpert.com/ ?
Last edited by: John H on Tue 1 Feb 11 at 17:17
|
|
That is where I got the figures from.
|
>> That is where I got the figures from.
>>
where? quote the exact words or give the URL.
|
Sorry was moneysupermarket.com they have a list of all 0% transfer deals.
www.moneysupermarket.com/credit-cards/
|
>> Sorry was moneysupermarket.com they have a list of all 0% transfer deals.
>>
>> www.moneysupermarket.com/credit-cards/
>>
That says "If you spend £1,200 at an annual interest rate of 16.9% (variable) your Representative APR will be xy.z% "
As I said, have you tried site I linked to? If you had, you would see this:
www.moneysavingexpert.com/cards/balance-transfer-credit-cards#never
"Never spend on balance transfer cards
There is no single more important thing to remember about balance transfers than the following…
“Never, ever, ever, ever …
…spend on a card after balance transferring to it!”
No matter how often I write or say this, I’m still often asked, "I know you say never, ever, ever spend on the card; but I did and it’s costing me a fortune, what can I do?”. If you have debts from spending on a card with a cheap balance transfer deal it’s likely to cost you a fortune, the only real way to beat this is not to let it happen. "
Is that clear? never, ever, ever, ever ...
|
>> “Never, ever, ever, ever …
…spend on a card after balance transferring to it!”
Better still, never pay interest on credit card. Pay in full each month *. Most credit cards give you some insentives like cashback/points etc. So if you always pay in full you can actually make money out of credit cards :o)
* = if you can't do that then it might be a good idea to review spending habit, one off interest payment on credit card is fine but if it continues month after month, then cumulative debt will hunt you for long time.
|
On the same subject, and following a fruitless conversation to my card provider last night, can anybody explain the following -
I had a card with a bank, and paid that off in full every month
I moved to a different card with the same bank 6 months ago, transferring the balance to the new card, paying it off, and continuing to pay it off in full every month
now the 0% offer has ended and I suddenly have a small charge - 'Interest on Balance transfer' appeared on my statement.
I can't see if the balance has always been cleared every month, there should be any balance to pay interest on, especially 6 months down the line. The lass at the call centre could do no more than 'its very complicated' and 'Ill you a leaflet', but it just doesn't seem right - anybody know better ?
|
>> any balance to pay interest on, especially 6 months down the line. The lass at
>> the call centre could do no more than 'its very complicated' and 'Ill you a
>> leaflet', but it just doesn't seem right - anybody know better ?
>>
She's been reading what Martin Lewis said:
www.moneysavingexpert.com/cards/balance-transfer-credit-cards#never
"If you have debts from spending on a card with a cheap balance transfer deal it’s likely to cost you a fortune, the only real way to beat this is not to let it happen.
The reason behind this is complex, so if you don’t understand my explanation below don’t worry, just remember the ‘never, ever, ever’ rule and you’ll be fine.
Why it’s such an expensive nightmare
Credit cards allow us to ..... "
Last edited by: John H on Tue 1 Feb 11 at 17:33
|
Rattle,
You need to find a card with a 0% offer on balance transfers - if there is such a thing.
Or, take out a card with a 0% offer on purchases, use it for all your incidental spending, and use the money you would have spent from your bank account to pay off the interest bearing card.
|
Barclaycard Platinum or Virgin are the ones you want at the moment Rattle.
They will give you 17 months to pay it off interest free.
Pat
|
>> Barclaycard Platinum
Suits you if you:
# have existing credit and at least 4 years of experience managing credit cards, loans, overdraft or mortgage
# You have always made payments on time
# Have a regular income of more than £20,000 pa
|
Exactly, I would expect Rattle to meet that criteria.
Pat
|
There's a few here which are 0% on balance transfers, but charge a one-off percentage fee.
Even after paying that, Rattolo would still save a few quid overall.
The likes of Tesco, the AA and Sainsbury are unlikely to expect a high minimum salary.
www.fool.co.uk/credit-cards/transfers-purchases.aspx
|
>> Exactly, I would expect Rattle to meet that criteria.
>>
>> Pat
>>
You might expect it, but he won't deliver - not if his earnings (even with his wished for increase to current levels) that he posted on his "blame everyone else for his woes" thread 9now hidden) are to be believed.
Last edited by: John H on Tue 1 Feb 11 at 18:45
|
I make less than £20k profit yes. Currently looking for part time work, a friend might be able to get me a nights job in Tesco which I would do for a few months at least till I clear all my debts off and save enough to my next years insurance premium in cash.
I will phone around tomorrow to see if I can get a better deal than currently.
My main concern at the moment is just to get my monthly out goings a lot lower than they have been.
|
>> I make less than £20k profit yes. Currently looking for part time work, a friend
>> might be able to get me a nights job in Tesco which I would do
>> for a few months at least till I clear all my debts off and save
>> enough to my next years insurance premium in cash.
>>
True, but you wouldn't be the first person to have fibbed about their income to the bank.
Come to think of it though, perhaps that's how we ended up in this financial mess.
|
But I don't fiddle anything though, I just don't think it is worth the risk, I have enough to worry about as it is. I do however make sure I claim for everything I can justify claiming for.
I include the car in my profits too as it is essentialy a business tool so I look at it like the business pays for the car (well 80% of it) so it is great being able to offset that with the tax. If I worked 9-5 in Tesco I could not claim anything for the car.
I am not sure we got into the mess because of people fibbing I think it was more the banks faults for taking too much risk and lending too much to people when they had no means to pay it back.
I admit I have stretched myself with credit and I am now doing everything I can do reverse it before it does become a problem. I could easily just sit back and wait until I am spending £500 a month just paying loans off and I have seen that happen to quite a few people.
So my aims are to pay most of my credit card off but also pay most of my car insurance by cash in one go. I want to get to 30 being as debt free as I can possibly can.
|
|
Oh, I didn't mean you fiddling stuff, mate - just the overwhelming amount of easy borrowing in general (mortgages excepted).
|
>> I include the car in my profits too as it is essentialy a business tool
So who owns the car? You or your business?
|
I am self employed so I own the car, but it is used for business purposes. The car is in my name, the business is me, my business name is legally purely a trading name of me, the business does not exist as a seperate entity as it is not a limited company.
So if the car costs me say £2000 a year to run for business miles that is £2000 income I don't have to pay income tax on.
In reality I can get more work done because of the car so the car probably means I earn more so it probably equals out. I just cannot imagine doing the job without a car now, I don't know how I used to spend all day on buses and manage.
If I worked in an office in town I would not bother owning a car, I would just borrow the Fiesta if I needed access to a car.
|
I really don't think a public internet forum is the place to be inquiring or speculating about another posters income, John, and I'm surprised that you do.
Pat
|
Its fine I mentioned that in the other thread anyway, I am not bothered about that, the thread was hidden because it started to get into much deeper detail.
Anyway I seem to qualify for the Nectar one which should do the job :).
|
>> I really don't think a public internet forum is the place to be inquiring or
>> speculating about another posters income, John, and I'm surprised that you do.
>>
>> Pat
>>
Kettle calling pot black!
It was you who posted a suggestion for a card which requires a certain minimum level of income!
Anyway, your contribution added nothing useful to the topic - the best advice remains to look up Martin Lewis's guide, as I posted in my first reply.
Last edited by: John H on Tue 1 Feb 11 at 19:03
|
|
Rattle - its worth giving your existing lender a quick call to tell them you are unhappy with the charge and are considering moving your debt elswhere. Sone will offer you a deal on your existing debt without the hassle of moving or paying the balance transfer fees
|
Borasport:
>> I had a card with a bank, and paid that off in full every month
>>
>> I moved to a different card with the same bank 6 months ago, transferring the
>> balance to the new card, paying it off, and continuing to pay it off in
>> full every month
>>
>> now the 0% offer has ended
Presumably you weren't paying any interest anyway, why did you bother moving to a 0% card?
I can't think of any explanation as to why you would be charged interest on a standard credit card if you pay the full balance off every month, unless you have used it to obtain cash, even disregarding the 0% rate.
|
Rattle I assume you know all potential applications might count against your credit history. There's quite a few for transferring credit and there is anything from 2.5 to 3% fee for doing so. But the period for 0% credit might be short (6 months) and are you sure you will clear it all by then?
An alternative might be a credit car with a low interest rate for the time the amount takes to pay off. Yes you're paying interest but it might be cheaper than trying to move the balance again. Or are you confident you can pay over £100pm on this by year end on a 0% rate?
|
I did wonder about the implications of my credit history. It is currently perfect so I would not want anything to affect that.
I have divised a new system I have to pay £150 a month of my credit card, if I can't I go out, this has a result of my being more motivated to earn more money :).
After the credit card I want to pay the car off as quickly as I can too.
|
>>
>> Presumably you weren't paying any interest anyway, why did you bother moving to a 0%
>> card?
it's a cashback card - one recommended by Martin Lewis :-)
>>I can't think of any explanation as to why you would be charged interest on a standard >>credit card if you pay the full balance off every month
- me neither
>> unless you have used it to obtain cash, even disregarding the 0% rate.
cash on a credit card ? not in a month of sundays
|
Borasport, I suspected those, or similar, would be your answers, but I still can't think of an explanation despite years of involvement with the provision of cards, among other things.
I can only say that if the explanation is too complicated for them to explain to you, they should not expect you to pay it ;-)
|
I sometimes get a statement...goes through the whole rigmarole and then tells me my balance owing is £00.00. Fine, but on the next one there might be an interest charge of a pound. I haven't kicked off yet, maybe I might when I'm in a bad mood.
Ted
|
|
It is not worth it though for £1 sometimes, it can cost more than to phone them up. All this reminds me of another thing I must do, change to a cheaper and better value ISP.
|
>> change to a cheaper and better value ISP.
Don't forget to factor in a cost you're happy to pay for quality of service. I had Virgin Media cable broadband for about 10 years and I had about 3 outages in that time. One was genuine for an evening, one was DNS related so I had a workaround and the other was due to a lightning strike taking out the cable modem.... the latter was sorted by using a different set-top box for Internet at the time.
I can't yet fault BT Infinity.
And I could have free Sky broadband but choose to have a faster service at a price. When Virgin have 100MBit/s in my area I might go for that.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 3 Feb 11 at 00:01
|
I was looking at BE broadband which is £14 a month and a "a very fair usage package" currently paying over £20 for AOL which is 8mbps.
BE also do a 20mbps for £18 a month which might be better, but even my 8mbps connection is fine for iplayer. I am the only one which really consumes a lot of bandwidth.
It has worked perfectly so that is why I have not changed but I am paying well over the top now. It was originally a free laptop deal (laptop is now used as a spare desktop since a shelf fell on top of the screen and smashed it).
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Thu 3 Feb 11 at 00:04
|
I pay £25pm (actually £27.99 with anytime calls I think and that's pre 20% VAT) for BT Infinity. I get a good connection and fair use is more than I would need/use.
I can't say what I get download because of Zero. But my upload is the same as your download speed ;-)
|
Any reason why Zero can't know your download speed?
Just need to keep this as cheap as possible really but reliability is crucial, probably far more than speed.
|
Who's Zero?
Didn't he used to post on here?
|
|
He gets upset when I say I get 38Mbit/s download. I don't know why because I could get 50Mbit/s on Virgin Media.
|
>> He gets upset when I say I get 38Mbit/s download. I don't know why because
>> I could get 50Mbit/s on Virgin Media.
>>
No, he gets upset when you willy-wave your 38Mbits at every flimsy excuse you get. ;-)
|
>> Who's Zero?
>>
>> Didn't he used to post on here?
Has he gone again?
|
...Has he gone again?...
I have my suspicions.
There were a couple of minor ding-dongs on Tuesday might.
No posts yesterday, not even visited so far today.
As you say, he's gone into self-imposed exile in the past.
|
|
Manatee - I'll see what appears in the post and then decide if i'm going to argue the toss with them. It's one of those 'matter of principle' things that just grates, but on the other hand it is only £3.09, and it's already cost me 1/4 hour on the phone and 1/2 an hour working out why I couldn't reconcile my bank accout, and quite frankly, I've got other stuff to deal with, so I might let it lie. But then again, there might be another charge next month, and that will elevate the blood pressure all over again :-)
|
0% transfer cards - John H
