Got Credit Card Debt? Use This Strategy to Knock Your Interest to 0% by Tomorrow
How much are you paying on your credit cards?
It hurts to think about, doesn’t it? Credit card companies are steadily getting rich off of you, quietly bleeding money from you with their high interest rates.
Don’t put up with it. Not for one more moment. Put a stop to it.
It’s easier than you think to shift that debt over to a balance-transfer card like Capital One’s Quicksilver card. All by itself, that one simple move will save you money and help you get rid of your credit card debt faster.
How This Strategy Could Save You Over $500
It’s just simple math. The fundamental fact here is the Quicksilver card charges zero interest on balance transfers for 15 months.
Let’s say you’ve racked up a $1,500 balance on a credit card with a 20% APR, which is about the median interest rate for credit cards.
So, you transfer that balance over to your new Quicksilver card. If you pay $100 a month for 15 months, you’ve paid off that $1,500 balance without paying any interest at all. It’s like magic!
On the other hand, let’s say you didn’t do that. Instead, you didn’t do anything at all, and you just left that $1,500 balance on your same old credit card, with that same old 20% APR. And you continued to pay the exact same amount — $100 a month.
At that rate, it would take you three extra months to pay off your balance. So you’d make an extra $300 worth of payments. You’d also pay $240 in interest during that time.
So you’d be out $540 overall — by not taking action. And that’s just on a relatively low $1,500 balance.
(In this case, you’d pay a $45 balance transfer fee, because it charges you 3% of the balance. Don’t be put off by this fee, because it’s a pittance compared to the amount you save.)
You can transfer balances from more than one credit card, too.
The Perks Beyond the Savings
The Quicksilver card has other benefits, too:
- Earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases. That’s right — every purchase. You’re not limited to certain shopping categories for certain periods of time or anything like that. (Though you’ll want to be careful of spending too much if you have lots of debt.)
- Get a one-time $200 cash bonus after you spend $500 on the card within three months of opening your account. That’s pretty easy to do. (Hello, groceries.)
- Pay no annual or foreign transaction fees or any other hidden fees.
Aside from balance transfers, the Quicksilver card’s APR for new balances ranges from 15.49% to 25.49%, depending on how your credit is.
Here’s the bottom line: Don’t feel bad about having an unpaid balance on your credit card. It happens. The average American credit card balance these days is more than $6,000, according to Experian.
What’s important now is that you do something about it. That’s why transferring your balance to the Quicksilver card might be worth a try.
Mike Brassfield ([email protected]) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He knows a lot about credit card debt, based on unfortunate personal experience.
