Tips for Credit Card Consolidation

Credit card consolidation may save you a considerable amount of money, especially if you're transferring the balances from high APR (annual percentage rate) credit cards to low APR credit cards, or better yet, one of the many credit cards that offer zero percentage APR for balance transfers.

There are five distinct reasons why credit card consolidation may very well be an excellent choice for you.

The first, as we just mentioned, is because your current credit card or cards are costing you far too much in annual fee or APR. It may be that the card you use for credit card consolidation may not offer a permanently low APR but rather a short term zero or low APR percentage for any transfer. Go for it! You can always do credit card consolidation, or just one bulk transfer to yet another card when the low introductory rate runs out on this newest one you've chosen.

Annual fees can be a strong incentive for credit card consolidation as well. These can add up, especially if you have several credit cards. While many cards have annual fees around $20 or $25 dollars, some can carry an annual fee as high as $250. Keep in mind, however, that doing credit card consolidation by transferring to a card that has no annual fee is only advantageous if you're going to use that card for the year. If, however, you're looking at a card whose introductory rate is six months, after which the APR skyrockets, that low or nonexistent annual rate is not going to be much help to you.

Your other credit card consolidation option may well be a personal signature or collateral loan. While it might seem that using a loan as a resource for credit card consolidation is a little like robbing Peter to pay Paul, the fact is that your monthly loan payment will be much easier to accomplish than the use of one credit card. Why? Because you won't have the temptation to use that credit card and rack up even heftier credit card debt.

If your credit card payments have been continually late they've probably affected your credit. Credit card consolidation may be a good way to reduce the debt and improve your credit standing.

One last reason for doing a credit card consolidation is to make a little money from it - right up front. There is so much competition among the various credit card companies that some literally offer to give you money back immediately if you'll transfer your credit card balances to them. They do this by saying that they're going to reduce that debt.

If, for example, you had a total of $2000 in credit card debt on your current credit cards, you might do a credit card consolidation with a new credit card that offers to forgive five percent of your debt. What this means is that the minute you do the credit card consolidation, transferring your outstanding balances on your current cards, you've made five percent of $2000, or $100 instantaneously.

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