Stop Paying Credit Card Interest: An Introduction to the Art of Balance Transfers

I was discussing finances with an employee recently, and I was horrified to hear about the amount of money she was throwing away every month on credit card interest fees. There is absolutely no reason to pay credit card interest anymore, and the answer is sitting right in your mail pile.

Anyone who already has a credit card receives offers to take out other cards regularly. Most credit card companies will try to rope you into opening an account with their company by offering various enticements- one of the most popular is the 0% interest balance transfer offers.

Most people realize that these offers to relieve them of the interest they are paying on the balances that they transfer from other credit cards are just carrots that are dangled in front of them. The credit card companies are looking to get the debts transferred over to their accounts so that they can hit you with inflated interest rates on those balances as soon as the 0% interest offers expire, and the new companies' rates kick in.

With a little attention to detail, you can stop paying credit card interest today, by using the credit card companies' offers to your own benefit. By maintaining a little diligence, and employing some simple organization, you can save yourself a lot of money each month by eliminating credit card interest altogether.

The first thing to do is to organize your debt. Look at the balances of all your credit cards and determine what amount of debt you are carrying that cannot be paid off within the next month. This is your balance transfer.

Go through your credit card offers and select the offers with the longest 0% interest balance terms. This is more important than the interest you will be responsible for once the terms expire, because you are not going to ever pay that interest. Next, check the maximum allowable balance transfer amount. If one card will offer allow you to transfer all your debt, then keeping your debt in one account is your best option, for simplicity's sake. Depending on the amount of debt you carry, you may need to open more than one new account to get all your debt into 0% interest balance accounts.

Most of these credit card companies allow you to accept their offers online, which can help you to eliminate your credit card interest debt quickly, before more interest charges accrue. When the cards for your new account or accounts arrive, place those cards in an envelope and file them away. They are not to be used for future purchases. These accounts are debt-only accounts.

Next, mark on your calendar, in your palm pilot, or in what ever timekeeping method you use, the dates that the 0% interest offer will expire on the balances of these accounts. Determine what monthly payments you will be able to make to pay down these debts. Hopefully, you will be able to pay off the balances before the 0% interest terms expire, but if that will not be possible, be sure to give yourself a month before the end of the offer term to seek out new offers, and mark those dates on your calendar, as well. As that rate expiration draws near, you will be accepting new 0% interest offers, and moving any remaining balance again. Be sure to cancel the accounts of the cards that are now carrying high interest rates as soon as you have either paid them off, or transferred the balances to the new accounts.

As long as you can pay attention to details, there is no reason to ever pay credit card interest again. The credit card companies are working very hard to find ways to get you to pay them money. There is absolutely no reason why you should not use the companies' own methods to ensure that you don't.