Balance transfers and advice on cutting your credit card debt

Before checking out the best deals there are two things you can check by telephone.

• Call your existing card(s) company and ask them if they can offer a lower rate as you are considering switching to another card
   
• If you have two or more cards you can often 'balance transfer' from one to the other at a lower rate of interest

The other things you can do depend on you circumstance:

• Can you pay your loan off within a year? - in which case opt for a 0% deal for as long as possible - eg a 0% on balance transfers for 13 months is on offer from several card companies
• Long term borrowing - it might be easier and cheaper to look at a permanent long term borrowing at a low interest rate

When you are looking into these kind of arrangements you may get rejected (or get an inferior deal) because of a poor credit rating or score - see our credit score article for more information on this.
 

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