How to do a good balance transfer

Because of the recent surge in popularity of the balance transfer tactic in the Australian credit card market, there are many balance transfer credit cards that can be considered new in the relative sense. Many of these balance transfer credit cards claim to be the best credit cards around, but the truth of the matter is that most of them are actually quite bad. There are a few balance transfer credit cards that are worthwhile however and this article will help you determine which balance transfer credit cards are worth your time. To start using this article, label each balance transfer credit card you come across as worthless and then continue reading below.

Limits

One of the things that a balance transfer credit card needs to do is transfer balances. This might seem a bit redundant and therefore moronic as a statement, but you would be surprised at how many banks forget this basic principle and how many people in Australia are duped into signing up for credit cards that can not handle their balance transfer needs. It is a sad story that repeats often, so guard yourself against it by remembering that at their most basic, balance transfer credit cards need to be able to effectively transfer balances. With your own balance in mind, promote any credit card that can handle the balance transfer in full from worthless to pathetic and ignore all of the other ones.

Introductory Offers

Now that you have a list of at least pathetic credit cards that will at the very least be able to handle your full balance transfer, you can go on and start looking at things in more detail. The next level that you want to look at is the introductory offer. For any credit card that has an introductory offer, you can promote it from pathetic to inept and forget all of the others.

With only introductory offer balance transfer credit cards left, you want to look for balance transfer credit cards that have an introductory offer that is at least six months long. If the card has an offer that is six months long or longer, you can promote it from inept to mediocre, but any card that does not fulfill this is immediately disqualified from serving any further purpose in the ranking of balance transfer credit cards.

Now, you would ideally like to get a balance transfer credit card with an introductory rate that is less than half of what the normal going rate for a balance transfer might be. In other words, if the normal balance transfer APR is 10%, you would like the introductory rate to be no more than 5%. All of the credit cards that fulfill this particular point can bet promoted from mediocre to average with all of the ones that do not fulfill this point getting tossed out of the consideration.

Fees

Fees are a very important part of the credit card consideration. Specifically, a good balance transfer credit card will have no annual fee attached to or a low annual fee attached to it because high annual fees will really just defeat the purpose of trying to get out of debt. Therefore, any card that has a low annual fee attached to it relative to the rest of the market is a credit card that can get promoted from mediocre to above average, with all of the other credit cards losing out.

Conclusion

You should end up with a list of credit cards that can be considered good. All of these cards would make excellent balance transfer credit cards in the Australian market and from that point you can then use personal preference to decide between the remaining cards.

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