"A second card would spread the cost"

The second card arrived in the post, pre-approved, and it seemed like a solution. More room. A zero-per-cent offer for the first year. Move some of the first card onto it and the interest drops, and the two limits together give you space to breathe.

Two things. The first is that more limit is more gap, and chapter 3 is about what the gap does. A second card with a two-thousand limit is two thousand pounds more of green number, and the green number gets spent, and eighteen months later there are two balances where there was one. This isn't a prediction about you. It's what the level in chapter 7 does with more room.

The second is about balance transfers, which StepChange lists as one option for dealing with card debt, and which can work. Moving a balance from a card at twenty-two per cent to one at zero for eighteen months saves real interest, if two things happen. The transferred balance gets paid down during the zero-rate period, because when it ends the rate on the new card is usually higher than the old one. And the old card, now empty, gets frozen and put away, because an old card with a fresh limit is exactly the reset that chapter 7 warned about. In my observation, the transfer that goes wrong is the one where the old card stays in the wallet, gets used because it's clear, and eighteen months later there are two full cards and the zero rate has expired.

So a second card can spread the cost, in the narrow sense that a transfer can lower the rate on the debt. It spreads the gap too, and the gap is the habit. If you use one, the old card goes in the freeze the same day, the fixed amount from chapter 20 goes on the new one at a level that clears it before the offer ends, and no new spending goes on either. That's a transfer used as a tool. A transfer used as room is the habit with two logos.

I'm not recommending a transfer or any product. The arithmetic of a particular offer is yours to check, and a debt adviser will check it with you for nothing.