conversation: User (jadebirrrd): "Hello PF, \n\nFirst post, have been watching this sub for quite some time and from following advice here and other research I've finally gotten to a point where my budget is working, paid off my car, and am snowballing debt. \nMy question is has anyone ever "played" balance transfer cards against each other? Meaning sending one balance from card to card every 12-18 mos to maintain a 0% APR? Any pros or cons to doing this? I feel like if I can do this I can get my cc debt knocked out quickly and with paying little interest. "
  Self: "Don't forget that there is a balance transfer fee, which is usually like 3%.\n\nSo if you have $10k, you'll pay $300 to roll it over. Do this twice in a year for 2 years, and it's probably $500 a year (assuming you pay some down) so about $1000.\n\nOn the flip side, if you pay the card off aggressively in a year, you'll pay about $1000 in interest in the year.\n\nSo just be cognizant of what it's really costing you, especially if you can pay it off anyway. The cards with zero transaction fee are few and far between (Barclay Ring is the only one I know of)"
  sphanley (sphanley): "I believe that Barclay Ring and Chase Slate are the only two 0% balance transfer cards with no transfer fee (for transfers within something like 30 days of opening the card)."
  Self: "Nice, didn't know that about chase slate!"
  sphanley (sphanley): "I may have spoken too soon - looking at the Chase site, it looks like they're advertising it as having a 1% balance transfer fee during the intro period. I know it used to be fee free, though - not sure if this is a temporary change or permanent."
  StarryNotions (StarryNotions): "Advertised as 0%, and you can qualify for it with good enough credit, otherwise default is 1%.\n\nI got one about a year and a half ago and then realized, the fee for balance transfer (which I thought it wouldn’t have, silly me) put me just over volume; I had to transfer the whole balance or none of it, and couldn’t afford the whole plus fees. So there’s a cautionary tale, for OP. I tried playing them off against each other and just ended up with _more_ debt, since I had an empty card and wasn’t able to reduce the value of the first card. Make sure you _can_ play them against each other before you commit. Read the fine print, even for the stuff that “doesn’t apply to you”."
  mas752 (mas752): "Can someone Eli5? If I have a 2k balance I want to transfer, besides APR and balance transfer fees what else should I be looking at?\n"
  