The answer to this will vary from 1.5 percent of your balance to up to 4 percent. Here, for once, you want the figure to be higher, rather than lower, because the lower your required payment, as the credit card companies well know, the longer it will take you to pay off the debt.
In fact, it is essential that you pay more than the minimum each month. (We’ll talk about why later in this chapter.) But the higher the minimum is, the better.
If You Carry a Balance, Is There a Grace Period on New
Purchases?
Most cards will charge you interest as soon as you make a purchase if you carry a balance, but there is one card I know of that does not, so keep your eyes peeled for others.
What Is the Cash Advance Fee Charge, and What Interest Rate Applies to Cash Advances?
This is where these companies can get you big-time. Even if your introductory rate is 5.9 percent, if you take out a cash advance, regardless of whether or not you owe a balance, many companies charge 2.5 percent (give or take) of the amount of each cash advance, up to a maximum fee of $20. Some cards 1.will charge you less for cash advances or tell you to use the convenience checks they supply, but you have to ask, because many companies charge those exorbitantly high interest rates even when you use their convenience checks. “Convenient” for them.
There an Annual Fee?
The only acceptable answer is no.

Credit cards really want your business, and if you’re a heavy user, with good credit history, they will make it very easy for you to switch to the card they’re offering. Caryn had discovered that you can switch your balance to an account with a lower (much lower) interest rate with a few phone calls and five minutes of paperwork.
And continued vigilance.
Too-good-to-be-true offers are usually just that: too good to be true. Open and read every credit card offer you receive in the mail. Ask and answer for yourself all the questions that follow. It may be that you have to roll over your debt two or three times a year to get the best deals. That’s a few calls and fifteen minutes of paperwork a year, and it might save you literally hundreds of dollars. When can you stop being so vigilant? When your debt is gone and you’ve taken the steps to guarantee it won’t go back up again.

Another scenario that plays itself out often in my office is when one spouse or partner has to admit to the other that he or she is hiding debt, usually credit card debt, from the other. That secret Visa card with the growing balance. The department store bill on which you keep paying the minimum balance due, but that never seems to go down. The big check you wrote against your Optima card and haven’t been able to pay off. Cash advances here, cash advances there. You just sort of don’t tell your partner for a while, and then it’s too late to tell.
This terrible secret is a burden to you, if you’re carrying it, and it’s an unfair burden on your partner, who, if you share expenses together, is unconsciously also carrying the debt. Debts can’t be kept secret forever. I’ve had blowups in my office. More than once I’ve heard, “Oh, so that’s the secret. I thought maybe you were having an affair.” Responses to the news vary. Some couples decide to deal with it together, some feel that the person who created the debt has to deal with it. But even if there’s a blowup, the result of letting that secret out is always a relationship that’s truer and more honest.
Please tell your partner if you’re hiding debt. Your integrity and self-respect are more important than whether your partner gets mad at you. Get help if you need it. You’re not alone. Non-profit credit counseling bureaus have been set up all over the country to help in cases lust like yours; call one if you feel you need one. You can get out of debt. So many others have, and you can, too—and once you do, you’ll create so much more money, without being drained by your debt and your secrets.