«
»

Best Balance Transfer Offers Available

Last Updated: 1/5/2012

The folks at PlasticIQ have scoured the web, including competing blogs, in a thorough effort to identify the best balance transfer offers in the marketplace.   Note that this post changes often as new offers come online and other offers end, so bookmark this page.

Currently, Citi has a nice 18-month promotional balance transfer rate, so all in all we think we’ve identified some of the best balance transfer credit cards around.

Credit Cards With No Balance Transfer Fees

Cards with no balance transfer fees and 0% APR are the equivalent of free loans, assuming you play it smart by always paying at least the minimum monthly payment.

Both Chase and Discover recently canceled their respective offers (Chase Slate, Discover More (canceled on 3/1/12), so you’ll have to be patient for the next offer to emerge.

Best Long Duration Balance Transfer Offers

While sometimes it makes sense to get a 12 month loan for free, there are other situations where you may want a longer-term 18-month balance transfer, and are OK paying the 3% balance transfer fee. Remember, a 3% fee spread out over 18 months amounts to a very low annual interest rate.

Citi Diamond Preferred 18-Month Balance Transfer Offer. While there’s a 3% balance transfer fee on the Citi Diamond Preferred Credit Card, bear in mind that you’ll pay no interest on balances you transfer for a whopping 21 months. That’s some serious piece of mind. You’ll also pay no interest on any purchases you make during the first 18 months–really nice! After the promotional period, your APR will range from 11.99% to 21.99%, depending on your credit level. There’s also no annual fee on this card.


Citi Platinum Select 18-Month Balance Transfer Offer. This balance transfer offer is basically identical to the Citi Diamond Preferred offer. They both offer a 18-month promotional balance transfer and purchase APR of 0%, followed by an APR ranging from 11.99% o 21.99%. Maybe there’s a difference between them, but it’s hard to spot.

Discover More 18-Month Balance Transfer Offer. The Discover More offer provides you with an 18-month 0% APR rate balance transfers and 0% APR on purchases for 6 months. Balance transfers must post to your account by 7/12/2012. There’s no annual fee, but there is the 3% balance transfer fee. After the promotional period ends, your APR will range from 10.99% to 20.99%.

Frankly, in the field of long-duration balance transfers, we like either the Citi Diamond Preferred or Citi Platinum Select the most. The 18-month Discover More balance transfer offer should be treated as a fallback (unless you want to grab both offers!).

Tags:

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 4th, 2011 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Balance Transfer Credit Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • https://www.penfed.org/productsAndRates/creditCards/balanceTransfer.asp Rich

    While it isn’t a 0% balance transfer offer, PenFed is currently offering 4.99% APR on balance transfers for the life of the balance (reminiscent of the good old days when Discover offered 0% for life). PenFed is also waiving the balance transfer fee through June 30, 2011. For people who need to transfer a balance but won’t be able to pay it off in 18-21 months, this longer-term offer might make more sense. From what I can tell, PenFed is offering this across all of their consumer credit cards.

  • admin

    Rich, thanks for the contribution and great call-out! Ironically, I *almost* included this offer in this post, but I actually take the position that it’s not a good offer to go after for most people…Here’s why…

    Here’s why this offer is fool’s gold for most people (though there are edge cases where it might make sense). Basically, a 4.99% interest rate with no annual fee is roughly the same as paying a 4.99% balance transfer fee every 12 months. Ouch! Assuming you can pay your balance off in 2-3 years, you’ll be way ahead of the game taking the 18 or 21 month 0% APR, 3% fee offers. A 3% fee spread out over 21 months is roughly 1.7% or so per year, versus 4.99% for the PenFed offer. Now PenFed’s heart is in the right place, but the math generally doesn’t work here–especially if you are one of those people that continually roll over balances into new 0% APR offers.

    Where it could make sense is if someone feels, for whatever reason, that in the future they won’t be able to access 0% transfer offers and thus they would be forced to pay down balances at a full APR. And of course it’s a good fall-back for those who simply get rejected for the 0% offers.

    I’m generally a huge fan of PenFed (their travel rewards card is one of the best out there), but I think this offer is a far different beast than the good old days of Discover’s 0% APR for life play (which yours truly is STILL enjoying;)

    Cheers, and again thanks for raising up.

  • Rich

    I never thought about the APR as an annual balance transfer fee. That makes it really easy to compare balance transfer offers of different types.

    I just wanted to also point out that I, too, am still enjoying that Discover 0% for life. I took the offer in 2006, and I have been paying the minimum payment on it ever since. I still have about 27 more minimum payments to go before it’s paid off.

    That means I will have had that 0% balance transfer offer for a full SEVEN years by the time I pay it off.

    That, my friend, feels amazing :-)

    -Rich

    PS: I love your site. Not sure if you saw my email/comment from a month or two ago, but after I found your site I did a wallet makeover. Now I use a combination of PenFed Premium Travel Rewards AMEX, PenFed Platinum Cashback Visa, Citi Forward Visa, and Hilton HHonors AMEX to get a 4.5% effective return with my spending profile (over 6% this year with all the sign-up bonuses).

    Thanks for the great info, and please keep the reviews coming!

  • Sprus21

    Discover removed the policy of only allowing 1 card per customer. You can have more then 1 card now so this offer is good for existing customers.

  • http://www.plasticiq.com/ Marc Davis

    Great news! I’ll try to confirm for the readership, but very promising, thanks for the update.