How do you handle 0% BT offers?

[Pit-Smoker]

Completely agreed, Janus...   it's just the Murphy's Law of personal finance, that's all.  

[Pit-Smoker]

Makes sense, @Brian_Earl_Spilner , and that's why asking the question.  

What I'm finding is that people tend to be quite conservative with these offers, and I find it curious.   I mean, assuming: 

(1) that there isn't a pay-it-off-during-term-or-you'll-be-back-charged-the-interest clause, and

(2) that the "reversion rate" at the end is similar to the rate where one is pulling the debt from to begin with,

Then I would think that if we're getting $0.00 for (15 months) then it's (hypothetically) good to have as much debt as possible at 0%, despite the fact that one can't pay it off by the end.  

However, people, yourself included, seem to be ignoring this fact and sticking, instead, to a FICO threshold and/or 'what they can pay' by term's end.  

For the record, I did the exact same on the payment side for one offer, and I only took the other up to 49% UTIL as well...   but this is why I was questioning my own sanity for doing so.  

[onstar]

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@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:

What I've normally done is figure out what I want to BT, subtract 1 month off the term, then break it up into monthly payments to see if I can afford to pay it off by the end date. I'll adjust the balance accordingly until I can.

I normally don't BT, but when I do, this is how I generally do it. 

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@Pit-Smoker wrote:

BUT for argument's sake-- if I have that same $1500 at 0% for 15 months...  and my other card is churning at 10%...  do you guys like to pay $100 a month to this one while it's at 0%?  You COULD be paying $30 to this one... and keeping the other $70 to break down the other debt faster, right?   

-- if this card pops back at 23% after the BT, then clearly, you have an answer:  Get this balance as low as possible before the return.  But in the event that pops back to a reasonably comprable rate to the other...  it's a tough call. 

I understand your math. But I'd still rather clear off the BT and make that balance $0 than to carry balance on an additional card.

[Anonymous]

Joking about hot potatoes aside, I do believe that people can get caught up into that very easily. Long before I ever thought about BT's, a friend of mine was doing the juggling act for several years. I don't recall the original balance but he was trying to pay off around $6K when i had found out about it, problem is he was only paying the minimums or twice that if he could. So it meant that he had to constantly roll it over every eleven months. Of course his situation improved greatly once he switched careers and got a very good paying job paying almost twice what he was making. The one positive thing was that he wasn't paying high CC interest all those years, so there's that.

Sometimes these BT offers  are either a blessing or a curse, and it's up to the individual to decide which it is.

[FlaDude]

Some cards won't let you max them out with BT in any case. I think CITI limits you to 75%, and Amex to $5k max. Back when I had huge debt and was paying almost $1k a month in CC interest, I maxed out BT cards, or came as close as the issuer would let me. It might have not been optimal for my scores, but my focus was getting the interest down so that I could actually make some progress on balances. I did BTs where I knew that I would not be able to pay off before 0% rate ended, knowing that I would need to refi the balance when the time came, so I did a few serial BTs. I know some people here caution against that, but it worked for me, and most of my debt is gone and I'm on track to be unsecured debt free in February.