So I moved with my wife to Seattle in May of 2007, and in the process of the move I ended up getting a credit card to pay for the essentials until the wife and I got set up with regular jobs & money & such. Then, we had several major life events come up in the next couple of months and the balance went up some. It's not at some ungodly amount, but we're definitely done using it for a while. So I have gotten an application for a new credit card basically every day of my life since I was like 17 or 18, and I've never really gone ahead with any of them because I'm kind of skeptical of most everything. But I have been thinking of maybe doing a balance transfer to a new card so that I can take advantage of a 0% APR for a small amount of time, during which I can really attack my current balance and take it down -- I've got a basic financial plan to have it eliminated in 18 months. My current card has no annual fee so there would be no reason to cancel it out, but I could also transfer the balance to a different kind of credit card so as to have two different ones, both with no annual fees, and the break in the interest for the next 18 months to pay off the balance. So my main question is, are there any pitfalls or problems that I can potentially run into with this? I've never done this and Clutchfans is easily the greatest source of information on the Internet.
I don't know if this trick still happens, but some cards will slam you with all of the retroactive interest if you don't pay the balance to zero before the 0% interest expires. Store credit cards did this more than the majors so it may not be an issue for you.
the only negative to this option is your score dropping a few points by the inquiry that will appear on your report, but you will easily overcome that small drop by paying off the balance. also, like A_3PO said, make sure it's paid off before the period ends (seems like that isn't really an issue for you) otherwise you could potentially be hit will obscene int.
