Credit card tarting- anyone do it?

[Bossybritches22]

As advised by Martin Lewis et al.

My sister does this moving debt around from one 0% card to another, never pays more than 5%, however she has a healthy bank account & makes sure she clears it pretty soon after any large purchases (eg holidays/Christmas)

I have tried to do this as I have 2 cards (Barclaycard & MBNA) and having tried to get a 0% balance transfer they have declined my request. I applied last year and the same happened & the reason allegedly was insufficient income. I have marginally more income this year, have never defaulted on payments & don't use the cards at all.

SO- how does one do it? I'm getting a bit frustrated at trying to be responsible about my debt & getting nowhere.

Thanks MN-ers!

I used to do it when I had a high income and a bit of credit card debt (long since paid off).

TBH, if you're being turned down on the basis of your income then I wouldn't keep applying. Don't quote me on this but I think it can affect your credit score if you keep getting turned down for credit cards.

Even much further down the line if you apply for a mortgage or something I think there would be a mark on your record saying you'd been declined and I don't think it would necessarily show why - just that you were declined. Maybe someone else can clarify whether that's true though as I can't remember where I heard it.

Yes I do it but i have a number of cards to do it with. I don't quite understand your op - do you have two cards and asked both companies to give you a 0% offer?
What is your income and what are the credit limits on your cards?

Ah, sorry, just seen they were existing credit cards not new applications.

Can't you split the debt between the two cards?

I think kiasport is correct about a "decline" having an impact on your credit rating. It will probably show up for 6 years but I don't know if it has an impact for that long.

Thanks kia & Cas, I thought I had heard about it affecting your credit rating too hence why I only tried once last year & thought I'd try again this year as there seemed to be good balance transfers around.

I've never had long term cc debt until my divorce & needed to pay solicitors bills and use them to live with as Ex didn't help. Have paid off my overdraft (not my choice but bank insisted, otherwise would have kept that & paid off higher interest debt first) & 2 other cards so I'm almost there, but money is so tight at the moment I was trying to get the interest rates down. Paying 17.9% & 14.5% so 0% would be a big saving.

Hey-ho I'll just plod on paying the minimum each month & a bit extra when I can.

cas sorry didn't answer your question - income of about £1600 pcm, but can be more if I earn more am s/employed & income varies. Need at least £1200 of that so on a good month I have a few hundred left to throw at them, obviously with Christmas and then losing my regular job between Christmas & NY the spare won't be there for a while.

Have £4300 left (out of £4600) at 14.5% on Barclaycard, £4100 (out of £4800) left on MBNA at 17.9% which is the one I'm concentrating on.

I think the difficulty you are having is that you already have quite a lot of debt compared to the income that you are on. The easiest way to get a 0% is generally to apply for a new card which as you have found is not being successful. The other way is that if you have transferred a balance or paid one off then companies will sometimes offer you 0% to get you to bring the debt back to them. At the moment neither of your card providers needs to do this as you already owe them money.
I'm sorry but I think that you are kind of stuck at the moment. The only other option may be if you sister has a card at 0% that she would let you transfer the money too but this is a big ask and to be honest I think most people would not be keen to do this.

cas yup thought so as I said I'll just have to plug on then.

Really pisses me off though as the debt is not going to go down very rapidly with that amount of interest though (which I knew when I took it out but had no choice) even though I've no overdraft and a regular (albeit small) income and own house.

Can you check your credit rating with Equifax for example in case something dodgy has got on there by error? I use 0% cards and find them very useful for large purchases, I put a recent £650 car repair bill on my latest card so I can pay it off gradually from income rather than raid my savings. If I think my bank balance is getting low I will stick stuff on the card instead of risking going into overdraft.

Yes I used to do that too Pony it works quite well.

I checked my credit rating last year & it was Ok-can't remember the numbers but it was still good despite my debts.