It is getting harder and harder to dig up any sympathy for Gordon Brown. Here we all are at the beginning of what looks like it will be one of the most unpleasant economic periods for decades and he suggests we ease the pain by eating more left overs.
“If we are to get food prices down,” he said as he left for the $280m G8 meeting of global leaders on Sunday, “we must also do more to deal with unnecessary demand such as all of us doing more to cut food waste which is costing the average British household about £8 a week.” It is of course absolutely idiotic to think that UK consumers can move the price of wheat by eating mouldy bread any more than to think we can affect the temperature of the earth by taking our TVs off standby. But on the plus side, at least Gordon seems to be getting the hang of the prudence thing at last, and I suppose saving the £8 a week – £416 a year – might go some way to help with our rising fuel and supermarket bills.
Why you should move any credit card debt into a personal loan
However there are ways to save more and in a slightly less trying way than, as the Daily Mail puts it, working to “rediscover the thriftiness that was once a watchword for British housewives.” Anyone in debt should start with this.
There was a period last year when the growth in unsecured debt (credit card debt, personal loans and so on) actually fell. But it didn’t last long. Now it is on the up again – at an annual rate of 8% and the average debt is a nasty £22,000 – much the same as the UK average pre-tax wage. Overall, as a nation we borrow 69p for every £1 we save, says unbiased.co.uk – that’s far too much.
If that debt is in the form of a personal loan, it might not be costing you too much in interest (although all interest payments are wealth destroyers and most debt is bad debt). But if it is in the form of credit card debt, it most certainly is: the typical interest rate on this comes in at around 15-16%. That makes it a good idea to move any credit card debt into a personal loan – if you can: typical rates here are more like 8%.
A great new deal for those with costly credit card debts
Otherwise, if you move fast, says Martin Lewis on Moneysavingexpert.com, you might be able to get your hands on a new deal being offered by the MBNA life of balance card. This allows new cardholders to transfer their existing credit card debt to it – with no fees – at a rate of only 5.9%. Better still, this absurdly low rate lasts until all the debt shifted is repaid as long as you make the minimum repayments every month and you make them on time (this is important – miss a payment and you’ll lose the 5.9% rate).
This, says Lewis, is quite a deal given that it “undercuts all loans and many mortgages.” However odds are it won’t last long, so anyone with “costly credit card debts” should grab it now. Anyone who misses it can look instead to Barclaycard, currently offering at rate of 6.5% for balance transfers, if you have a good credit rating.
That done, they should immediately get to work paying down the debt: if you could afford to make your minimum payments at 15%, you can afford to pay an awful lot more than the minimum payment (which usually runs at about 2% of the debt) at 5.9%. And the faster you pay the debt down, the faster it will disappear and the lower your overall interest bill will be. Pay just £10 a month over the minimum payment, says Moneysupermarket.com – an amount you could save just by following Gordon Brown’s instructions for just 10 days! – and you “could halve the time it takes you to pay off the balance on your credit card.”
• Have a look at what Gordon himself was eating on the day he told us all to eat more leftovers
• To get a good deal on a credit card, compare low-interest credit cards. Or better still, compare savings accounts and put some money away.
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