Once upon a time, it was fairly easy to find a credit card company that was willing to provide new cardholders with balance transfers for free. Nowadays, however, it is virtually impossible to find a card willing to waive these fees. While you can pretty easily find a card willing to offer low interest rates, or even 0% interest, on initial balance transfers, most still charge a fee to complete the transfer. This fee is usually equivalent to a percentage of the amount transferred
Of course, bouncing around from card to card and opening new accounts does not look too good on a persons credit record. At the same time, neither does failing to pay back a debt. So, for those trying to make their dollars stretch as far as possible, card-hopping became a routine occurrence.
In order to make their customers think a little harder about transferring balances, most cards have gone with charging fees for transfers. There are some card companies, such as Capital One, that do still offer free balance transfers. Therefore, if you look hard enough, you can still find a card that won’t hit you with these fees. But, think long and hard before card-hopping, or your credit and financial stability may suffer.
Related Posts:
- How Many Balances Can You Transfer To One Credit Card? - Say you have 15 credit cards, all carrying a balance. To make life easier, you’d like to consolidate, but paying off all...
- Don’t Be Fooled by Free Credit Report Tactics - Ugh! I just saw another one of those commercials on television that drive me so crazy. You know the ones, the commercials...
- “Free Money” Cash Back Rewards A Fallacy For Some - A recent blog post from Katie Spence at Fool.com talks about how to get “free money” from 5 prominent banks, where you...
- Transferring A Balance To Your Existing Card Issuer Carries Risk - Citing a source from ThinkMoney.com, credit card holders might be in for a rude awakening if they apply for a 0% interest...