How can I pay off this loan quicker?

[WhyTheBigPaws]

I had a large loan some years back when I was crap per than I am now with money and am paying it off at just under £500 a month. I am able to cover this luckily. The loan has about £6000 left to pay off and a little more than a year to go.

My dilemma is that I made a promise to myself a while back that I would clear all of my debt by the time I was 40 and that happens in Feb next year. Obviously the loan will be almost paid off but it would be great if I could clear it before then and stick to my promise.

I can't afford to overpay any more but was wondering about other ways to pay it off eg moving it to a 0% interest credit card or something. Might there be any other way that I haven't thought of?

I am really proud that I am almost debt free but would love to get it sorted completely when I promised myself I would.

you could get a 0% card like you said, but you need to check with your loan company that there aren't any charges for paying it off early.

I'm not sure loans can be transferred to cards and, besides, there's usually a percentage charged for the transfer balance so you might not be that much better off. Agree with the above suggestion to check your lender's policy on overpayments. If you can deposit a lump sum or overpay each month you may be able to bring forward the end date and save yourself a lot of interest in the process.

When you request a balance transfer the cash gets deposited in your account usually, so you can pay it off whatever you want. Agree though, there is normally a transfer charge to consider too.

Surely transferring a debt onto a credit card doesn't make you "debt free" which seems to be your goal, it just moves the debt elsewhere. If you are determined to be debt free, could you identify areas to cut back just for the few months until your birthday to get the debt repaid.
Would you be prepared to forgo a holiday this summer to reach your goal? Or bring your own lunch to work etc. Or cycle/walk instead of driving?
Transferred debt is still debt IMO, if you actually want to pay it off by Feb, there are lots of money saving threads in "Credit Crunch".

No of course money on a card is still debt. I just meant that without the interest I might have more chance of paying it off by February. Cutting back is obviously one way to go but if I'm going to pay this off sooner I need to attack from several angles I think.

InMySpareTime, I think OP meant that if the debt was on a 0% card, the 500 she is paying would all go to paying off the capital, and not on interest payments in the meantime. But I agree that cutting down other expenditure is probably the best way to get the loan paid off.

As others have said, with the early repayment + balance transfer fees, moving the debt may not save you very much money (do banks even do balance transfers into current accounts any more?). Some of that depends on the interest rate on the loan, though.

Is the debt currently at a high APR? I'd have thought that with a year left, not much of the repayment is interest by now. Find out how much you would actually save by moving the debt, what charges you might incur from the lender/CC company, and whether it is really worth it overall.
£6k to repay, 9 months to your birthday, I make that £750 a month to pay it off.
You're already paying £500, so you need to find an extra £250 a month, or £2250 by your birthday. Could you ask for money instead of Christmas or birthday presents, tell people your goal, they might well be sympathetic.
Could you cancel e.g. sky subscription or gym membership, or give up magazines or newspapers.
Every little helps, as they say.

I think I need to speak to the bank and see what charges I might incur but I hate speaking to them because they always try to persuade me that I need other products, they'll have me with a new loan stretched over x more years if I'm not careful.

An extra £250 a month could be doable, will have to have another look at my finances.

If you have paperwork about the loan (you should at least get an annual statement) you should be able to find out the APR of the loan, and what early repayment charges might've due. Money saving expert should have at least a link to a calculator to work out how much interest is left now.

Have a look on that Martin Lewis website. There are 0% cards that have no fee, especially if you only need the 0% part for a year. Obviously the ccard would need to have a high enough credit limit to allow you to cover the debt, not sure how much credit banks are giving out these days.

Also, Just a thought, Would you have had PPI on the loan ?

You're in danger of reverting to being "crap with money" - making a financial decision on emotional grounds rather than "working it out".

You're near the end of a loan. When you took it out you knew the period, and therefore the date when you could aim to be free of debt. You knew this was a little past your 40th birthday. You've kept up payments on this loan. That isn't failure!

From the basic rule "you don't ever get something for nothing" I can just about guarantee that any ingenious refinancing deal will NOT save you money. (I'm assuming your current loan is a reasonable deal, not with the Mafia? :-)

Sounds like you're on a good path to solvency. Don't mess it up now for a purely emotional reason. Maybe you can pay extra without penalty. It's worth checking. But apart from that, stick with the arrangements you've got. Happy Birthday for February (same month as my birthday) and Happy No-debt Day for sometime next summer!

(The banks will all have collapsed by then anyway, so all this will become rather academic.)

Thanks wombat that's a really encouraging post :) You are so right that I am emotional about money but I hadn't seen this situation like this - I really thought I was trying to do the right thing!

I've dug out the loan paperwork and I would have to pay up to £250 to settle early plus a balance transfer fee to a card would be around 3% so I doubt it would be worth it. I think I may just try and pay a it more towards it where I can and accept that it is going to be paid off in the year of my 40th rather than on that exact date!

Trumpton I did have PPI but stopped it very early on - pity!

Was 'early on' any time in the last six years?