Credit Card Debt Payoff

[FtangFtangOleBiscuitBarrell]

Hello. 🙂

I have one credit card left to pay off (in the last eight months I've paid off two other credit cards, a personal loan and an overdraft, and saved just over £1000 in the bank as an emergency fund - first time in years I've had this and it feels strange and good in equal measure).

The credit card I have left has £3200 on it and is 0% until August 2022. I need to buy and insure a car this summer, as I can't function much longer without one, and I want to save up the money to pay for that in cash rather than put it on a credit card/pay the insurance monthly with a massive interest rate.

Therefore I was thinking about paying £200 a month off the credit card and putting any excess into savings. It'll still cost me nothing due to the 0% interest, but I keep doubting myself and thinking would it be better to go hell for leather at it and pay it off by June and do nothing else until then.

What would you do? Pay it off in 16 months and have savings/cash on hand for a car or pay it off in 3 months and delay everything else? I've also just signed up to my workplace pension plan because I don't want to miss out on any matching or compound interest, which I suppose I could have delayed for another 3/4 months but it didn't feel right with me to do that - would you delay pension contributions?

Spread out the 0% payments until Aug 2022. Don't miss out on employer contributions to your pension - it's free money. Save for your car and insurance. Shop around for a good deal when you are ready.

Firstly, a massive well done for getting on top of your debts.
£200 a month will clear your 0% debt by the August deadline. Paying it all off now gives you less money for other things like pension and a car. The debt is an interest free loan so there’s no advantage to paying it off early except of course the total satisfaction of it being gone, which I get. As long as there’s no chance of you not keeping up with the payments, I would do the things that make your life better: pay into your pension and get a car. And give yourself a massive pat on the back! Well done!

Firstly well done!! I would do exactly as previous posters have said. Pay £200 a month, save for car and pay pension. Do all three and then you aren’t missing out on pension contributions from employer, you have the satisfaction that all debts will be gone by Aug 2022 and have a car soon too x

Thanks all. I think I'll pay the £200 a month and just sock away as much as I can in savings and pay into my pension. Think it's just a mindset change as the other debts were interest-accruing so I've done very little else since September other than pay them off, whereas this isn't urgent and I can pay it off less intensely.

And if anything happens I do have the emergency fund now which I could use to make a payment on the credit card if I needed to (if I lost my job or something, not that I'm expecting to as I've just been made permanent, which is why I'm now eligible for the pension). I'm getting married in October, which is partly why I wanted to be on top of my money long before then, to not inflict the mistakes of my early twenties on soon-to-be DH. 😂