Come on Citi, you need to start offering 0% for life =)

I've had 2 Discover "0% for life" cards for over a year and just received a mailing for the same offer - so it is still availalble.

The only hitch is that you need to make two purchases each month to keep the 0% offer in place.

This I do with $0.25 breakfast bar purchases at the local convenience store. The interest rate on the purchases is 9.99% which isn't too bad in itself.

All in all a great deal that I figure saves me about $1,600 a year in interest on home improvement debt I moved from my HELOC.

Also reduces the loan balance a lot quicker since virtually my entire payment goes to principal.

How do you go about transferring the money to INGDirect or another savings? Does the credit card company give you checks that you write to whomever without a fee? I love this idea, but have always been very cautious when dealing with credit card companies.

Doesn't this hurt your overal credit position? Opening new accounts and closing older high interest accounts hurts your established length of open credit. I understand the stance of you saving on interest and even earning a return, but is it worth it?

Maybe if you will NOT be making a large financed purchase in the next year where a lower credit score will cost you thousands.

Probably obvious for most, but might be good to point out this means not making any purchases on this existing credit card. Any payments to the credit card would be used to pay down the balance transfer before they are used to pay down purchases (which would have a higher APR)- not good to do if you plan on leaving this as a primary card.

MM, since you are overseas, how do you apply for these offers, since you have to have a valid U.S. address to be eligible? Let me know, since I am currently relocated to Brazil.

I was skeptical of the credit card arbitrage game at first, but I have been at it 3 months, doing the following -

- Pulling $14,000 (credit limit of $16,000) in cash via balance transfer checks from Citi Premier Pass (they offered to make the checks out to me) at 0% for a year, with no fees

- Opened a $10,000 credit limit Visa with US Bank, 0% purchases and balance transfers, no fees. I transfer the monthly balance from my cashback reward card to this card.

The only downside I've had is that my credit score fell by 30 points (772 to 742); not too bad for taking on an additional $26k in credit card borrowing capacity. A word of caution: read the card offerings in detail, as they are almost certain to contain fees, etc. that will trip you up (three favorites that I've seen 1) balance transfer fee of 3%-5% of the amount transferred 2) applying payments to low-interest balances first (this one was mentioned earlier) and 3) confusing 'balance transfer checks' with 'convenience checks' - convenience checks fall into a far higher interest rate and fee category.

If anybody has any ideas of where I can get some no-fee balance transfer checks made out to myself, please let me know, as I have an impending car purchase to make in the next couple months, and I used the $14k from Citi to fund my wife and I's 2005 and 2006 Roth IRA.

Mike: Yes, Citi actually allows me to do an ACH transfer to put the money to my checking account.

Latin Guy: I no longer apply for new cards now :-(

mm, Really? I asked about doing this with Citi on my last balance transfer and the operator said they couldn't do an ACH transfer for "money laundering" reasons - I had to get a check sent to me.

What's the difference between and ACH and getting a check sent to you. Yes it's slightly more inconvenient, but once you receive a check you can then do an ACH transfer from the bank you deposited in into another account if need be or just cash the check and send a deposit to your savings account etc.

All sounds good, but I would like to know where you get the money to pay off the minimum monthly payment if you have 2 cards with 10k balance. any recent cards to apply for

I now have over $14,000 in credit card debt.