If you are struggling to meet high monthly credit card payments, balance transfer credit cards could well offer you the chance to cut your monthly payments and even reduce your balance. These offers are designed to entice customers away from their financial institutions to a competitor and after the introductory period, you will be back paying normal credit card costs once again.



However, there is nothing to say you can't play the banks at their own game. By simply transferring your balance to another balance transfer credit card before the end of the introductory period, you will be able to continue to pay very low or no interest on your credit card debt. This will put a lot of money back into your pocket every month and some of that money could be used to pay down your credit card balance so that you get out of debt sooner.

The best balance transfer credit cards will have the lowest transfer costs and the longest period with a low or even zero interest introductory rate. There are so many different types of these cards in the market place that you will need to be prepared to shop around and read the fine print of offers before applying for one. With new offers coming online continually, this is no easy feat.

An alternative is to use a service that does all the hard work for you. The better credit card advisory sites offer a free alert service notifying you that your introductory period is coming to an end, information about various offers and regular emails of new offers. The purpose of these services is to help you stay one step ahead of credit card interest rates by making it easy to transfer balances to new balance transfer credit cards before your current introductory period runs out.

If you carefully consider upfront costs, the length of the introductory period and penalties if you pay late, you will be in a good position to choose the right option for your needs. By taking ongoing advantage of balance transfer credit cards, and transferring your balance to another zero or low rate card before your introductory period expires, you will be able to extend the benefit for another full introductory period. Then you may do this a third time and a fourth, and so on, as long as you select the right type of account.

The easiest way to make sure you don't forget when your zero or low rate period is finishing is to sign up for a reminder service. This way you never have to leave that introductory period, you will have more money in your pocket every month and you will become debt free far sooner than would otherwise be the case.

Balance transfer credit cards is a good overall strategy to use as a way of keeping overall control of your finances. By automating the process you will solve the problem of having to remember to transfer funds to a new account every few months. You also need to watch out for cards which apply a fee to all balance transfer transactions.