Freezing interest on a credit card?

[MurderOfGoths]

Is this even possible? I haven't spent anything on my card in over 6 months, but the interest means I haven't been able to lower the amount owed, in fact it keeps going up and I cannot afford toay off more.

If I could just freeze the interest I could pay it down in a decent amount of time, but otherwise I stand no chance.

It's with Barclaycard if that makes any difference?

We got interest on a few cards frozen as I had got us into a terrible muddle :( and run up a lot of debt when I wasn't, shall we say, not too well :( They can do it if you don't have the card and are on a low income sometimes. The only fuckers ones who refused were Virgin - I guess Mr Branson needs the money

No harm in asking though.

yes it's possible, but you will have to supply an income /expenditure sheet showing that you cannot afford to pay the normal monthly minimum amount. Also you will have to do the same with any other cards / loans / catalogues - you can't just deal with Barclays and carry on paying the rest. And it is likely to leave deafualts on your credit rating.

It is called a debt management plan (DMP). It can be temporary to allow you to get on top of your finances, or longer term.

It is explained in detail here: debtcamel.co.uk/debt-options/dmp/

You may be able to get help from StepChange, a charity, to help you do this (see www.stepchange.org/) or you can write the letters yourself. But don't go to any firm that will charge you money for this!

(I don't make any money from any links in my posts)

You can but it will have a negative impact on your credit report, and (usually) means they will close the account once it's repaid. They will want you to do an income and outgoing form to show you can't afford the payments as it stands. Its a last resort really, but if you can't manage it another way then its possible.

I can just about afford the minimum payments, it's that they are getting me nowhere. Am looking to leave them anyway, and luckily have no other cards/credit owed.

You would probably be better off finding a 0% balance transfer, or even swapping it to a personal loan if you can't get another credit card rather than asking them to freeze the interest on it. Means you're not damaging your credit rating, plus they may say no anyway if you're affording the payments at the moment.

If your debt is unaffordable and getting out of control do seek free advice from somewhere like CAB.

Did try swapping to another credit card before but got declined, so not sure my credit rating is worth worrying about

"can just about afford" - well it depends how tight this is. If you don't usually work to a detailed budget, it would be a good idea for you to draw one up (and discuss it with your partner if you have one) and then think about whether that is realistic for the long term. There is a link to a budget calculaotr here debtcamel.co.uk/snapshot/financial-summary/ that can then be use to print a Income/expenditure sheet to send to Barclaycard if you do need a DMP.

If your "can just about afford" means if nothing goes wrong with car and you don't buy any clothes for you and you don't need to go to the dentist, well that isn't realistic and a DMP is probably a good idea.

But sometimes drawing up a budget suggests that perhaps there are places you could cut back - I like this app orsaveit.com/ and there are general hints here debtcamel.co.uk/improve/decrease-your-expenditure/

If you just py the current minimum and carry on repaying that amount as the minimum drops, you will start to see the debt go down faster and faster. And if you can pay just a few pound more at the start, you may be surprised how much quicker it goes. Put the numbers into talkinpeace's excellent spreadsheets here and see: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legal_money_matters/1715581-Cost-of-credit-cards-and-mortgages-the-spreadsheets

Definitely more the second paragraph, haven't done a detailed budget in a little while so will sit down and do that, thank you for all the links!

Slight hijack, for which i apologise;

Congrats to Manzanilla on the excellent Debt Camel website. I used to work in tjis field so feel reasonably qualified to commend it. I notice a major debt charity has also praised it.

I also noticed it has been disparaged on this board recently and a post deleted. Bad call MNHQ!

Have a look at the spreadsheets on the thread I've just bumped to the top of the board ......
if you freeze your payment at this months AMOUNT rather than just paying the minimum, you'll get through the bill much much quicker ....