When making a balance transfer, which balance gets transferred?

hashbrowne

My credit card has 3 types of balances on it. For the sake of this post, lets say all balances are 1k each, so total debt on this credit card is 3k divided equally into:

Purchase 16% APR
Balance transfer 0% APR for the next 12 months
Cash advance 25% APR

If I want to do a 1.5k balance transfer from this card to another, with the view of getting rid of the interest I'm paying on the cash advance, will it work? As in, when I do a balance transfer, does the credit card company apply the balance transfer in the same order as when you make a payment (highest interest balance gets paid first) Another way of putting it is, does the credit card company allocates the balance transfer to cash advance first, then purchase, then balance transfer?

PS. I know the daily cash advance rate is killing me and really bad for paying off debt, but I needed the money quickly at that time, and it was the only option I could do within the timeframe I had to come up with the money. Now I'm trying to fix this so that I can pay off my credit card debt in 2 years.

jonesMUFCforever

To be sure can you not get a balance transfer card to cover the whole debt?

If not call your lender and ask them what will be paid off.

grumbler

I am sure at all lenders higher rate balance gets paid first, i.e. in this case 25%, then 16%.

No need to call.

hashbrowne

Thank you jonesMUFCforever and grumbler.

I tried to get another credit card that can cover the whole balance but this one didn't give me enough balance to do the whole transfer unfortunately.

I have previously called the credit card company to find out before I posted here, but got through to some guy in Phillipines who didn't understand my question, and after attempting twice I gave up and started to search online.

Thanks again :beer: