BellaOnline Forums Money Home Finance Avoiding Interest Fees on Credit Cards

For over a decade I had managed my income without ever carrying a balance on a credit card. I had run into trouble with credit cards as a young adult and I had vowed to stay clear of balances going forward.

However, these last months have been rough on me, with the recession and with struggling to finish up my college degree. I didn't want to give up on my college degree after wanting it for 25 years. So I struggled on and just put the bills onto my credit card. I quickly had it at $10,000.

So my task for today was to find a place to move this money so I was NOT paying interest while I chipped away at it. It so happened that my balance was on a Chase card, which meant I couldn't use the awesome Chase deal of zero interest, zero balance transfer fee, zero fees that is being offered. If anybody currently has a balance I highly recommend looking into this! You can move your balances to Chase completely for free and it won't charge you interest for I think a year. That gives you a lot of time to pay off the bill without dealing with interest.

Since I couldn't use the deal, being on Chase already, I signed up for a Discover card. Yes, they charge a 3% balance transfer fee - so $300 to do the transfer. But once it's moved there is 0% interest and no fees for over a year. I would easily have paid $300 in interest if I hadn't moved the money. So this way I can now pay off that balance over time with, in essence, an interest-free loan.

So now I set up automatic monthly payments to pay off that Discover card at a rate to whittle it back down to zero within the year. With my last college class paid for, that will finally be possible.

Do you guys carry balances on your credit cards? Have you looked into moving them onto zero-interest cards?

Lisa,

Kudos for such attentiveness and financial savvy. I know you have the discipline to get this done.

I don't carry a balance on my credit cards. I come from a family that nearly always paid cash for everything. Early on when I first got a credit card, I soon realized that I could quickly forget what I bought and how much I spent by the time the bill came along. I resolved to do my best to avoid a balance. So far, I have kept that resolution but I must admit I have not had a big problem that caused me to need a lot of credit.

I think you have done amazing with your college degree and I think it was worth putting on credit. The recession certainly has been hard and I know you'll get this paid off soon.

Here's hoping better financial times are ahead for the economy and everyone of us who have been living through it.