Moving Money

While I'm not happy about it, I freely admit that we maintain a credit card balance. Despite my best efforts, we still manage to spend quite a bit each month, occasionally beyond our means. There, I've said it. LOL. It's the American dream afterall. We're not talking a huge amount of credit debt, but the national average, as listed by The Today show this morning. In fact, we're just slightly above the national average. Sigh.

Anyhow, I've become very adept at moving money around various accounts to try and get the best interest rates possible. It's been an easy task previously, but I'm beginning to think the gravy train may be drying up. In the past, I've usually been able to get balance transfers with no transaction fees, for anywhere from 2.9 to 6.9 percent. So, whichever credit card had the best rate would get my business. I'd shuffle money from card to card using balance transfers. Keep in mind, we've been making healthy payments each month, but we also keep spending. It's an evil cycle. Kaching! So, while this money shuffling has kept our interest payments low, we haven't made any significant progress in paying these damn things off. At this point, I think it may be a perpetual cycle that will be with us for our lifetime. I know, we'd fail the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace class with ease.

This month, all previous low interest rates had expired, and it was time to play the shuffle game once more. Although, this time, we didn't make such a great deal. All of the cards are now back to charging a transaction fee for the transfers (at least in our accounts), which is typically a 3% fee, with an upper limit. We did have one card that had a transaction free interest rate of 4.9%, but unfortunately, that was the card that all of the money was on this month. Crap. Oh well, it's not the end of the world. I did manage to find a balance transfer rate of 0.99% through April 2007, but with the dreaded 3% transaction fee. Let's just say, the 3% transaction fee will be cheaper than paying interest at 21%. And so, the chase begins anew. Note though, we're not opening new credit cards. We have 3 main credit cards, and we've been shuffling money through each of those 3 cards. So, it's not that bad, and in the end, we're getting some pretty good rates. I wonder if the credit cards have figured this out? I'm sure they have, but as long as they keep offering the good rates, I'm going to take advantage of it whenever I can.