Hey there! I am sure this has been asked before. I am new to owning credit cards and now have FOUR! to choose from. Here is my quandary. When I first opened my Discover Platinum, I had a high interest loan I transferred over because they offered 0% balance tranfer percentage for the life of the loan. Great, I thought! Well, I also shopped for back to school stuff, knowing I was going to overspend and was willing to pay it back over the next several months. I have a 0% APR until 1/2005, so may pay it back, may not in that time frame. Then I found out that although I have 0% on my balance transfer, the lowest interest loan is paid on first, so you can see where that goes if I carry a balance. Here is my question, or has anyone done this - opened a new card, balance transferred everything onto the new card (that only offers 0% APR on BTs for a few months), then balance transferred back to the Discover where 0% is offered for the life of the loan? The fees will be about 45.00 for both transfers, so that's not a problem.
That does sound like a good plan, I had something similar and had to balance transfer off of the card just to take advantage of the for life offer, so that the puchases didn't eat up the interest on the account.
You want 3 types of cards: 1) those you use for purchases, and always pay off. Never carry a balance. 2) Those you balance transfer to, and do not use for purchases, or pay off purchase balances before BTing to. These should be the ones offering you the best BT terms. 3) Those you do not currently use, in case you have a problem with any card, or need to BT to another card. You may use them periodically, but mostly you want the CC company to be seeing a low debt to credit limit across all your accounts, and be trying to entice you to BT to theirs.
