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December 12, 2025 13 mins

What's up BA Fam! Mandi's back with a new BA QA, taking listener Tina's question about managing credit card debt, specifically focusing on balance transfers. She explains the benefits and risks associated with transferring balances to 0% interest cards, the importance of comparing offers, and the potential pitfalls of deferred interest. Mandi emphasizes the need for a strategic approach to debt management, encouraging listeners to take charge of their finances while also being mindful of their mental health during challenging financial times.

As always, these QA episodes are meant for edutainment purposes and are not a replacement for personalized financial advice. 

Have a question for the show? Email Mandi at brownambitionpodcast@gmail.com or DM her on IG @brownambitionpodcast. 

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey ba fan, Welcome back to the show. Welcome to
the BAQA. This is where I take your questions and
I give you, like a lowercase A answer. When we're
getting these salt shakers out, I should honestly get a
Brown Ambition theme salt shaker at this point. This is edutainment.
I am giving you my best idea of what I
think could work for you. But at the end of

(00:20):
the day, I am not your financial planner, your investment advisor.
I am your financial bestie, I hope, one of your
financial besties and someone that you feel like you can
chat to and be honest with about what's going on
in your life. I want to inspire y'all to take
charge of your finances and your career and all of it.
But let's not get a twisted. This is not a
replacement for someone who is in the weeds with you,

(00:43):
understands your entire financial situation and can give you really
deeply personalized advice. I also thank y'all for trusting me,
and if you'd like to get your question answered on
the podcast, it is so easy. Hit me up. I'm
Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com, or you can
slide into my DMS directly. I'm Brown Ambition Podcast on
IG and I would love to hear from y'all. You

(01:04):
can remain anonymous. You can ask me a question about
a friend, about your family, about your finances, your career,
whatever you want, and I will do my best to
deliver for y'all as always. Today's question comes from listener Tina,
who is trying to pay off some debt like so
many of us are, the year is winding down. Here's
Tina's question. Hey Mandy, please call me Tina. You've been

(01:27):
doing a great job on the podcast since Tiffany moved on.
Thank you, Nita. I miss hearing her, but you're doing
a phenomenal job, so keep up the great work. I
miss hearing from her too, even though I just talked
to her a couple hours ago. Hey Tiffany, thanks for
talking to me for an hour while you were on
your brick City cot Girl freezing weather walk. I love you.
Tina says you recently spoke about transferring credit card balances

(01:49):
and I wanted to know what should I look for
when considering this. I have a two two hundred dollars
balance on my only credit card and I want to
transfer this balance to a zero percent interest card for
at least eighteen months, if possible. What places do you
look for when searching for credit card companies? What should
I be aware of when looking at this option, and
is there anything else you think I should know. I've

(02:11):
been looking for a job for one and a half
years and I'm trying to reduce this debt, but money
is extremely tight. Thanks for all of your help, Tina.
First of all, thank you for the kind words, and
I just want you to know two hundred dollars in
credit card debt, you can absolutely get a handle on that.
At the same time, when you are out of work
looking for that consistent income for a year and a half,

(02:34):
cash flow is going to be tight. And I completely
understand why either you have had to turn to credit
cards to or this credit card in particular, to pay
for some expenses you may not have had cash for.
Or maybe this is just some credit card debt that
you had previously before you were out of work and
you just haven't been able to make the payments on it.
That being said, a year and a half's a long

(02:55):
time for interest to be accruing, and you'll know these
interest rates. Even though the Fed us this week has
reduced interest rates by what a quarter percentage point? That
should start to you know, we should start to see
almost instantly some impact to our credit card aprs and
other you know, variable debts that can impact our interest
rates and bring them down a little bit. But it's

(03:17):
not that much, right. Credit card interest rates are still
on average well over twenty percent, very very expensive debt
to be carrying. And then of course each month, your
bank is going to add the interests that you've earned,
that you've accumulated onto your credit card balance, and if
it remains the same the next month, you're just going
to be adding even more interest because now the bank

(03:39):
is calculating that interest on the bigger balance from last
month's interest or cruel so you can see how it
can quickly become this snowball affecting it bigger and bigger
and bigger. Which is why I love talking to y'all
about options to start whittling down that debt that maybe
you haven't thought of. And I do often talk about
balance transfers, so just as a recap, a balance transfer

(04:00):
is when you apply for a new credit card, and
credit cards have these promotional balance transfer offers because why.
Because they're greedy in the end, and these banks want
new customers, and they know one of the best ways
to get new customers is to say, hey, that Chase
credit card that you have, they're charging you twenty six
percent APR. Why don't you give us that balance. We're

(04:22):
going to take that off your hands. We're going to
offer you a eighteen month zero percent promotional APR on
that balance, which means you bring that debt over to
us and we're not going to charge you any interest
for the next eighteen months. Now, this is a situation
where it's kind of like you scratch my back, I
scratch yours. It's good for the banks because why because

(04:42):
they're going to get a new customer. And even though
they're not going to be charging you interest on that balance,
what they do to do often with balance transfers is
a charge an upfront balance transfer fee. This is typically
between three percent to five percent of whatever balance you're transferring.
And also they know that there's a good possibility that

(05:03):
even though you're transferring the balance over to them, that
you may still be unable to pay it off in full.
So all they have to do is wait eighteen months
and then bada being Bada boom. Now they have a
little cash cow. Now they can charge you interest on
that balance, and they can start making that twenty six
twenty plus percent whatever the APR is, you know that

(05:24):
you have on that account at the time. On the
other hand, it can benefit you, especially if you're disciplined
enough to say, I'm going to transfer this balance to
a new credit card with a zero percent introduction APR,
and I'm going to make a plan to pay this
off before that introductory APR expires. There's a lot of
benefits to this. Obviously, when you have a zero percent APR,

(05:49):
every dollar that you make toward paying that credit card
down is actually going to go toward the main principal balance,
right if you were keeping if you continue to pay
the card that you have at that twenty something percent interest,
you potentially are making a payment that could start to
whittle down your principle. But it may just be that
you're able to make a minimum payment, which is almost

(06:10):
not even enough to cover your interest payment sometimes, Right,
So if you get that balance transferred over to a
zero percent balance transfer card, then you know every dollar
I am putting toward paying this down is actually a
drop in the bucket, it's actually going to be moving
the needle. Okay, there are some things to watch out for. Again,

(06:31):
you want to take into consideration that you know, let's say,
in your case, you have a twenty two hundred dollars
credit card balance you want to transfer over. Let's say
that you do get approved for an introductory balance transfer
credit card with a different company, and they are able
to approve you for let's say three thousand dollars for
a credit card, and they're going to charge you a

(06:52):
five percent balance transfer fee when you transfer that money over.
So let me just do a quick calculmul calculmum. Let's
see I would do two thousand, two hundred times five percent.
That is one hundred and ten dollars that they're going
to charge you when you transfer that balance over. So
you just need to make sure that when you transfer

(07:12):
the balance, that's the best case scenario that you are
approved for a balance transfer credit card that can more
than cover the balance you want to carry over. Now, unfortunately,
let's say you're only approved for a credit card that
has a thousand dollars limit on it. Now, that means
you're not going to be able to transfer over the

(07:32):
full two thousand, two hundred dollars, you'll only be able
to transfer one thousand dollars. But in that case, you'll
actually be able to transfer less than a thousand because
you have to account for that five percent fee, which
I think will be what fifty bucks one thousand bucks
times five percent, Yeah, fifty bucks. So that'll leave you
with some money on the other credit card. I mean,

(07:54):
you could argue that something is better than nothing, but
I'm just trying to lay that out as a situation
that could potentially happen. So bear that in mind. Now
you ask, like, where do you find these balance transfer offers?
Google is your friend? And I only say that because
it's going to bring you to the top you want
to get on when you're looking for a balance transfer
credit card. Those offers and deals can change quite frequently,

(08:16):
so you always want to be up to date on
the latest offers. You may be getting letters in the
mail from banks. I mean you can take those with
the grain of salt. Sometimes they will offer you, you know,
decent intro APR offers from you know, let's say Bank
of America or Chase. You may have got those letters
in the mail with some checks attached saying we have
an eighteen month or twenty one month promotional APR credit

(08:37):
card that's yours. If you want it, just apply here.
But don't just take that and let that be the
only offer that you consider. The key to making smart
financial choices and choosing products carefully is compare, Compare, compare.
There's three great sources to compare and contrast balance transfer
credit cards today that I would recommend, one being bank rate, bankgrade,

(08:57):
dot Com, another one is nerd while and third is
credit Karma. These are three. There are more out there,
and I say the more information the better. But credit Karma,
bank Rate, and what was the third one, nerd wallet
are three of the ogs. I mean for as long
as I was a business journalist covering credit cards and
business finance and personal finance, I means since twenty since

(09:19):
twenty eleven, these three have been around and been in
the game. And I also was the senior I was
the what was I content director for one of the
big competitors called lending Tree, And when it came to
really understanding our competition and other people in the game
that we're doing great work. These were the three that
we would constantly be competing with, so just putting that

(09:41):
out there, you want to compare and contrast. So let's
take one of those. I'm on nerd wallets right now,
and they have a whole article on credit cards where
you can pay up to no interest for up to
twenty one months. And what you'll find on these websites
usually what I like about them is they have a
nice visual comparison tape. Well, I'm looking at this on

(10:01):
nerd wallet right now. I see Chase Freedom Unlimited card
has a zero percent intro APR for fifteen months with
a zero dollar annual fee. That's nice. City Simplicity again
has another offer, there's only for twelve months. Wells Fargo
reflect discover It City double Cash. Pretty much every major

(10:22):
bank has some card where they're offering you a zero
percent introductory APR. Another common pitfall or kind of thing
to look out for when you're doing a balance transfer
and to understand is that if you have your credit
card and it's a Chase credit card, you're not going
to be able to take out another Chase credit card
and do that balance transfer. There's just not much in

(10:42):
it for the bank. Why would they offer you zero
percent when they're making mad money off of you. Right now,
you're going to have to go to a different credit issuer.
So you're going to have to look at Bank of America,
we Wes, Bank City, one of these other providers to
get that balance transferred. Something to keep in mind now,
the big, big, big scary thing about balance transfers, well,
other than the fact that often when people do balance transfers,

(11:03):
they don't actually make any payments because it feels like
a payment holiday. Well, who, I'm not paying any interest,
so why make a payment that obviously just puts you
in the same predicament twelve to eighteen months down the
line when that APR introductory rate is up and you're
gonna have to be in the same situation again looking
at a new balance transfer or this is a big
one dealing with deferred interest charges. So in some of

(11:26):
these agreements for balance transfer credit cards, and you want
to read them carefully, just do a control f for
the agreement and find the words deferred interest if they
have a deferred interest clause. What this can often mean
is even if you leave as little as one dollar
left on your balance once that intro period is up,
they may slap you with interest as if you always

(11:48):
work throughing interest on your original balance. So definitely watch
out for that. And I'm not saying that that should
you know that that has to stop you from taking
advantage of the balance transfer. But you're gonna want to
set a calendar reminder for at least two months in
advance to remind yourself this intro APR expires in a
couple of months. Make sure the balance is paid in
full before then. And if you have some balance it's

(12:11):
going to be left over and you're not going to
be able to pay it, then you need to definitely
make a game plan to apply for another balance transfer
card and get that balance transferred over before you are
slapped with that deferred interest. All right, Tina, I really
appreciate your question. I wish you nothing but luck and
your job search, and wish you some piece when it
comes to paying off this debt. I know it can

(12:33):
be really stressful. At the same time, I know you're
fully capable of paying that down and as you get
if you get that zero percent intro APR, definitely make
a game plan to be putting something toward that each month.
Looking for additional streams of income sources of income so
that you can start whittling that down, just so that
you get it off your plate. And your credit score

(12:54):
can improve, your credit history can improve, but most of all,
your mental health can improve, because y'all know, when you're
carrying that debt, it can just weigh on you so
so heavy. So I really empathize sympathize with you, Tina,
and just want to say good luck, happy holidays. Thank
you so much for your question. Hey, fam, that's it.
I put on a red lip for y'all, a little dark,
little vampy red lip today and showed up for y'all

(13:16):
because I care that much about this community that we're building.
Stay tuned from exciting updates on Brown Ambition in twenty
twenty six. I will see y'all one or two more
times before the holidays. But I hope that you are
taking care of yourself, not getting too swept up in
the holiday rigamarole, and taking some time to do some
deep breaths, fule meditation. Little time for you, little hot

(13:38):
girl walk you know something, to get back to yourself.
Love y'all so much, Take care, Talk to you soon. Bye,
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Host

Mandi Woodruff-Santos

Mandi Woodruff-Santos

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