At some point, you may come to realize that you’re no longer interested in paying interest on your credit card balance. When this time arrives, you have two options:
- Eliminate your balance once and for all
- Use a balance transfer credit card to your advantage
Since you may not have enough money to pay your balance in full, transferring the debt to a balance transfer credit card may be the best decision you can make.
However, this leads you to a very important question: how much of a balance should you transfer?
Since no two people are facing the same situation, you need to dig a bit deeper before you can answer this question. Here are the types of details to address:
- How much debt do you have? The answer to this question will go a long way in helping you decide how much to transfer. If it’s a small amount, you may not have any problem transferring the entire balance. Conversely, if it’s a large amount, it may be more difficult to do so.
- How many credit cards to you have? It’s easier to transfer a balance from one card than from multiple cards. It’s not impossible to complete this transaction when you have debt spread across multiple cards, but it may add another challenge.
- What’s the transfer fee? This is perhaps the biggest question to address. The more money you transfer the higher your transfer fee. You need to know the answer to this question, as it will help you decide what you can afford.
If you have the ability to transfer all your credit card debt to an offer with a zero percent introductory rate, you should probably do so. This could save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars in interest.
But even if you can’t transfer all your debt, you shouldn’t shut down this idea completely. It’s still something that could improve your situation. You simply need to crunch the numbers to get a better idea of what it could do for you.
Have you used a balance transfer credit card in the past? How much money did you transfer? Were you happy with your decision?