New Year’s Resolution: Pay No Credit Card Interest
It’s two days before the New Year and many of us are busy coming up with resolutions we can break during the first week. However, with all the chaos in the financial world, many of us will be setting our sights on fixing household finances.
With that in mind, Smart Credit Choices has an easy New Year’s resolution that you can accomplish in a few minutes. That resolution is to pay no credit card interest in 2009.
For credit card abusers, this may seem like a difficult task. However, all one needs is a new credit card that offers a 0% interest rate for a year to actually follow through on this resolution.
To get started, gather up all your credit card statements. Take a look at the interest rates and add up the balances. Chances are, this is not a fun thing to do. However, once you’ve assessed your credit card debt situation, fixing the problem is easy.
First, pick out a card that offers a 0% APR on purchases and balance transfers for a full year (you can find one of these in the 0% APR credit card section of this website.) Once you’ve found a card, complete the online application, input your current balances and set up transfers and click submit application.
Voila! If approved, you can expect to save at least $100, if not substantially more, for every $1000 you transferred from your high rate card to a 0% interest card. For example, if you had $5000 in credit card debt at a 14% interest rate, you’ll save yourself about $600 in interest this year. Not so bad. And by doing this today, you won’t give yourself enough time to break the resolution.
We at Smart Credit Choices wish you the best for 2009 and hope this little resolution can help you save a lot of money next year.
To find the 0% credit card that will save you the most in 2009, simply visit the credit card comparison section of our website by clicking here.
December 29th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
What credit card do you recommend for 0% balance transfers?
January 8th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Discover and Capital One have been the most popular with visitors of Smart Credit Choices. And they have also garnered the least complaints. In fact, we haven’t received a single complaint about Discover Card in more than a year – and we had close to half a million visitors in that time.
February 16th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Be careful with those 0.0% transfers, especially if you may pay them off fairly quickly. I have 3 credit cards with substantial lines (all in excess of $30,000) with a total outstanding of $150. I get the 0.0% transfer requests all the time, probably because I don’t need them. In the fine print all of my cards now have a 3% upfront fee, and none of them have the $75 max that they used to have. Thus, if I was to take out $50,000 in advances, I would be charged $1,500 fee for the priviledge. If I for whatever reason, that translates into a 36% APR.
Just be careful out there.
Regards
February 19th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Jeffrey,
The 3% fee is charged once, not monthly, so the APR would only be 3%. This is significantly lower than the 10% to 18% most consumers pay. If, for example, you did a $50,000 balance transfer from a credit card with a 15% interest rate, you would pay $1500 in fees, but save $7500 in interest over the course of a year. Thus, your net savings would be $6000.