Is ‘stoozing’ worth the hassle?

When you work in a team of financial experts, you tend to learn lots of clever money-making tips. My personal favourite involves storing funds from a 0% interest credit card in a high-interest account; or stoozing.

Stoozing can make you hundreds of pounds a year with minimal effort, but it has its critics. Some people say it’s too risky and not worth the hassle. What do you think?

Stoozing first became popular back in the early 2000s, when savings accounts offered much healthier interest rates.

This was before credit card companies introduced fees for transfers to bank accounts too, so stoozers could make big profits simply by transferring funds from their card straight to their savings account.

The introduction of these transfer fees made things slightly more complicated. Most stoozers get around them by completing their everyday spending on a 0% interest credit card, leaving their regular earnings free to earn interest in a high-interest current account.

Stoozing: how much could you save?

Basic-rate taxpayers who ‘stooze’ away £2,000 in a TSB Classic Plus will make a cool £80 a year. Store away £20,000 in a Santander 123 Current Account and that figures rises to £456.

All you have to do is set up that direct debit for the minimum repayments and remember to pay the remaining debt back when the 0% deal ends. Surely that’s worth the effort?

Is stoozing worth the risk?

Of course, if you forget to put the money back onto your credit card before the 0% period ends, you’ll have a mountain worth of interest to pay back on top of your balance.

And if you spend the extra money that stoozing provides instead of storing it away, you could end up in severe financial trouble.

But surely you don’t have to be a financial journalist working with dozens of money experts to be able to avoid these hurdles?