10 Years and 7 Months To Repay a £360 Credit Card Debt!

If someone told you that it would take you 10 years and 7 months to repay a credit card debt of a mere £360, you’d justifiably probably think they had been enjoying too much of the festive spirit.

However, if you are the sort of person who is happy merely paying off the minimum balance on your UK credit card each month, then according to a new warning issued by the price comparison website moneysupermarket.com, that’s exactly how long it’s going to take you to repay the average amount we Brits will spend on our credit cards over the coming holiday season.

Moneysupermarket.com is warning UK credit cardholders that unless they take advantage of a zero percent balance transfer credit card offer, they risk maintaining levels of credit card debt over extremely prolonged periods of time if the only way they can repay that credit card debt is to make the minimum monthly repayment.

The reason why it will take us all so long to repay this credit card debt is because, typically, UK credit card providers charge an Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of 15.9 percent on their credit cards. As a result, unless we take full advantage of the few zero percent balance transfer offers still available, we’ll effectively be trapped in an interest fueled debt spiral over the next decade and a half.

In order to have any chance of breaking this spiral of interest fueled debt, if we cannot take full advantage of one of the few zero percent credit card balance transfer offers still available, then we need to ensure that as much as possible of our Christmas credit card spending is done on a credit card that has the lowest APR possible.

Robert Kenley, head of credit cards at moneysupermarket.com, remarked, “The key benefit of a zero percent deal is that all of the monthly repayment goes towards clearing the outstanding balance and, therefore, the debt can be cleared much quicker.”

Despite this, a new report published by moneyexpert.com estimates that 2.7 million Brits now have five or more credit cards in their wallets or purses; with 11.575 million having 3 or more credit cards. And, despite the dwindling promotional offers of zero percent credit card balance transfers available, moneyexpert.com’s analysts see this growing trend of multiple credit card usage among Brits as being endemic of a wider debt problem in the UK, rather than UK credit card consumers becoming more savvy about consolidating our credit card debt among credit cards that offer lower or zero percent APRs.

Alisdair Milton
13th December 2006