I’ve been doing some housekeeping on the back end of the site, upgrading from the ancient versions of Wordpress and the Now Reading plugin I’ve been running throughout my on-again, off-again relationship with blogging. It feels so shiny and modern back here. (Which is something I suppose, because on the front end I’m still long overdue a layout redesign and blogroll update.)
I have a couple of posts brewing, but in line with my ongoing attempts to get my financial house in order, today I want to talk about the fact that credit card interest rates in the UK have hit a 12-year high.
My main card provider recently quietly jacked up the interest rate on my account to 24.9% — that’s basically 50 times the BofE base rate. But that did me a favour, because it gave me the nudge I needed to transfer the balance from that and my second card to a 0% offer. I was hesitant because I didn’t want to open another credit card account, but not doing so has essentially had me throwing money away in interest on a monthly basis. The banks are reporting multi-billion-pound profits — they don’t need my hard-earned cash.
Coincidently after reading the above-linked piece in the Guardian, I got a call checking a couple of details to approve my application for the new account. (I read that somewhere as a money-saving tip — if you apply online for a credit card with a 0% offer and they say they need more info, give it to them because it doesn’t mean you’re not approved.)
So now my two card balances are being consolidated to one, saving me a few hundred pounds in interest over the coming months. It’ll mean some tweaking of my Wesabe and debt snowball/budget spreadsheet setup, which now won’t be as tidy as I would like in my weird random orderliness, but it shows the whole point of that setup is working — taking control of my finances and identifying ways to pay off my debts faster. Before, I wouldn’t have been paying enough attention to notice that my interest rate had changed; when my previous 0% offers expired I didn’t get around to switching, having the vague idea that I’d pay off the balances so it wouldn’t matter, and yet here we are.
It feels good to be taking charge of the situation and watching the balance fall. I’m so looking forward to pay day next week to tackle another chunk.
*my literal tidiness kick lasted about a week at the of last month…now I’m back to living in my usual clothes-strewn pigsty.
Tags: finances
