Free Money from Credit Cards Stoozing 4.0 – MBNA £545 Profit
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MBNA Credit Card
Balance Transfer: £5,500
2.99% Balance Transfer Fee ; 2.5% Monthly Repayment
0% Interest Payments for 32 Months (December 2024 to July 2028)
Time to go for my 4th Balance Transfer offer on the Blog. If you are not familiar with this process, this post is about how to make Free Money from credit cards. If you are new to the Blog, let me explain very briefly what I do: I extract money from credit cards and I then park it in no-risk savings accounts. This money yields interest paid on a monthly basis adding up into the pot. The clever bit is that this process involves not using my own money (mostly) to generate Free Money. Let’s bear in mind that my ultimate goal is to progressively increase the amount of borrowed money to grow this pot that I call the Stoozing Fund. At this moment in time, I have borrowed £7,500 which has turned into £8,016 netting a profit of £256 over time. It might not look like a lot, but sure enough, it will quickly snowball thanks to the magic of compounding.
If you are familiar with Stoozing, you can skip the next section. For those who are not, please read the following paragraph to get an understanding of the basics.
What is Stoozing?
The idea is to use money from a third party to generate profits by placing borrowed funds in a risk-free investment (ie: Cash ISA or savings account). Since I will be contracting a debt, my aim is to use as little as possible of my own money to service repayments. At the end of the loan, I will pay off the remaining debt, recovering my deployed funds and raking in the rest as profit.
More specifically, what we will be doing is using a 0% Credit Card Balance Transfer offer to make Free Money. It works by transferring an existing balance from a different credit card and saving that money away for the duration of the 0% promotional offer. The money in the savings account will be generating interest and in the interim, we will need to make minimum monthly payments.
Stoozing is yet another one of my Free Money Income Streams. The difference with this one is that it requires a certain amount of funds to cover debt repayments. Having accrued nearly £1,000 in the Cash Reserves Pot, I am finally in a position to build up a Stoozing Fund. In this post, I will document my methods and my line of thought. I hope that you find them useful for your own purposes.
Making money from Stoozing is like following a recipe: you need a number of ingredients and a process to follow in order to deliver the desired outcome.
Stoozing resources:
- A Credit Card 0% Balance Transfer Promotional Offer (the longer the duration, the higher the profits).
- Funds to invest (unless you opt for a Money Transfer instead of a Balance Transfer).
- A savings account to park borrowed money so that it generates interest over time.
- A pool of your own money to cover credit card monthly payments.
Having those in place, the process consists of:
- Balance transfer the relevant amount and then deposit an equal amount of money in a savings account.
- Set up minimum monthly payments on the credit card.
- Watch the savings account grow and make sure monthly payments are met so that no disruptions are experienced.
- At the end of the 0% promotional offer: clear the remaining debt, pay yourself back and collect your profits.
- Repeat.
How do I make Free Money out of the MBNA Balance Transfer 0% Promotional Offer?
I happen to have £5,500 in savings and an equal amount accrued as credit card debt which is just about to be due (November 2025). This is not by chance. Let me explain: the easy part for me is to get into debt and the hardest part is to save an equivalent amount and time both sums when the credit card introductory period comes to an end. To be specific: I need to pay off or balance transfer £5,000 by the 1st of November 2025, otherwise, extortionate rates will kick in (20-30%) spiralling this debt out of control. Hence my job now is to find a second credit card where I can shift that debt for as long as possible so that I can keep my savings intact generating profits in the form of interest payments.
There is no mystery or magic recipe to find the right card. I mean my process is simple enough: I just use comparison websites or set up alerts to scan suitable offers that tick all the relevant boxes. In this sense, there are only two basic criteria I am looking for: a) I want to find the longest 0% introductory period and b) I want to incur as low a transfer fee as possible.
I will cut to the chase by summarising the conditions of the MBNA Credit Card as the best offer I managed to find this time round:
- Balance Transfer: £5,500
- 2.99% Balance Transfer Fee
- 2.5% Monthly Repayment
- 0% Interest for 32 Months (December 2025 to July 2028)
It looks like a great offer on paper and it is. However, it comes with a sting in the tail since it is not the best in terms of return on investment (ROI) as I will show you later. For now, let’s run some numbers.
So, if I go ahead with this Balance Transfer offer, how much Free Money can I potentially make?
- After transferring a £5,500 Balance I will owe £5,564 = £5,500 + £164 (2,99% of £5,500 as a Fee for the Balance Transfer).
- I will have to pay back £142 (2,5% of £5,564) the first month, £138 (2,5% of £5,523) the second month, £135 (2.5% of £5,385) the third month, and so on (see repayment plan).
- After 32 months and coinciding with the end of the promotional period, I will need to pay back an outstanding balance of £2,584.
That is the liability element of the process but what about profits? I will keep £5,500 in my Cash ISA account which will be accruing interest at an annual rate of 4,6%. All things remaining equal, I can expect a profit of £545 after 32 months. That will be £709 minus the balance transfer fee of £164 attached to the offer.
I am making Free Money using money I do not actually have, but is this a good deal for me?
The answer is yes… and no. On the positive side I will make £545 Free Money at zero risk. Guaranteed. On the flip side, I am going to have to commit £3,145 of my own money to satisfy repayment requirements for the duration of this offer. And that is definitely not so good. You see, the whole point of Stoozing is to use as little as possible of my own money whilst the entire sum is sitting in a Cash ISA making Free Money on top. That is when the ROI indicator comes in handy. The higher, the better. I mean it is still a decent 17% but I am aiming for a 25% to 30% to make this effort really worthwhile.
Why did I take on the offer then? Well, at the risk of coming across as an excuse, I was not expecting such a hefty 2.5% repayment. Either it was not presented to me at the time of applying or I just got carried away and overlooked it. All in all, it was too late when the first payment came in. As experienced as I think I am, there are always mistakes to be made which is ok as long as I learn from them and they are not repeated in the future.
£,5500 BT MBNA Credit Card Stoozing Summary
Expected Gross profit: £709
Expected Net Profit: £709 – £164 = £545
Return on Investment (ROI) = Net Profit / Own Funds = £545 / £3,145 = 17%
Break Even: 9 months
I need to come up with £3,208 or £100/month as an average over the next 32 months
This is definitely throwing a spanner in the works as regards to cash flows. If I am planning to earn £1,500 Free Money per year, it means that it needs to be committed to credit card repayments only. Well, problem solving as you go is part of this Journey. I now need to come up with a Plan that allows me to service card repayments in the Stoozing Fund leaving the basket of ISAs in the Free Cash Fund untouched. A little bit of a challenge but not entirely out of reach. I will deal with the issue separately when the time arrives to develop my Projections for 2026. As it stands, I am growing the Stoozing Fund from £8,015 to £13,572 and that will generate interest in the region of £65 to £70 per month. As you can appreciate, things are turning really interesting as I scale the Fund up. It should be obvious by now that my only constraint is the cash available for credit card repayments. And that, my friend, will be the subject of a different post. For now, I am satisfied to have sown the seeds for future profits. Until the next one.. tada.
