Although the high volume of financial advertising has certainly dropped considerably of late, suprisingly credit is still available although perhaps not so blatantly put forth as it once was. But still, almost every store we go into is offering credit on 'easy terms' and credit card companies are still offering 0% interest rates in abundance.  And once you've got a credit card, before it's settled into your wallet or purse the company are telling you there's no problem in upping your credit limit or a loan might be useful ...... and so it goes on.

But never mind how it happened, if you have got a lot of debt with various sources then you are almost certainly paying a high rate of interest for this, and the basic rule is - if you are a homeowner, there should normally**  be no need for you to be paying interest on any loan, credit card, bank loan and the like at a higher rate of interest than you are paying on your mortgage. Read that again slowly - and think about it, for it's true!

**But times are not 'normal' at the moment and whilst the above statement still holds true many are finding that for a variety of reasons it is just not possible to transfer credit card and other debt on to a mortgage even if they wanted to, because of the limitations on the amount that can be borrowed overal in relation to the property value.

Some people used to be a bit unhappy about transferring credit card and other finance to a mortgage, because, for example, they didn't like the idea of a 3 year loan for a car, say, being transferred to a 25 year mortgage payment!  This is quite understandable, but nowadays there is no need for this to cause concern.  This is because with most mortgages you can transfer high interest rate loans into the mortgage arrangement but continue, if you wish, to pay off the balances you transferred at the same amount as before - this means that you will pay them off far quicker at a much lower interest rate.  You will find that with most lenders you can overpay on your mortgage by at least 10%  However it must be stressed that if you transfer higher interest rate debt on to a mortgage to reduce your overall payments, if you do this and nothing more - such as increasing your mortgage payments - you will ultimately pay far more

The interest rate you are paying on your credit cards and store cards could be three or even four times your mortgage interest rate!    If you are a homeowner then there should be no need for this at all, because by a simple remortgage exercise you can normally bring all your outstanding credit into your mortgage arrangements. However, all this assumes you have handled  all your credit well.  Since the arrival of the 'credit crunch' lenders are scrutinising remortgages far more carefully, and if there is evidence that you have not been paying your credit promptly, you may have difficulties with a remortgage.

You would also need to understand that if you transferred  short term debts to a long term remortgage arrangement, and didn't make additional repayments to compensate, you would end up paying more interest in the long run.We suggest you have a quick look at the 'what is a remortgage ' section for more information.