Hello and

welcome back to Money Girls quick and dirty tips for a richer life.

I'm your host Laura Adams. This podcast is about how to use a balance transfer credit

card wisely and which cards have the best offers right now.

I've received several questions on this topic,

including an email from a listener named Linda.

She wrote,

I'm in my last year of college and racked up $6,000 in credit card debt. The annual percentage rate is 22.99%.

I've considered transferring to a credit card that has a 0% rate. Is this a good or bad thing? How do I go about the transfer?

Which card would work best for me? I'm confused, please help.

Linda, thanks for your question. I hope to clear up all your credit card confusion in this

podcast. For anyone who may not be familiar with balance transfer credit cards,

they're a special type of card that offers a very low or 0% interest rate.

That means you can keep a balance on the card without having to pay a penny in interest

in some cases.

You can use a transfer card to pay off higher interest debt such as

credit cards, lines of credit, or loans and save a substantial amount of interest.

Here's how it works. After you're approved for a transfer card, you'll receive it

along with a small supply of checks that you can write on the new account. Let's say you're like

Linda and have a $6,000 balance on a high interest card with the

crafty credit bank. If you want to pay off that entire balance and transfer it to the new card,

you'd make one of the transfer checks payable to Crafty

...