OK, this is the third post about making money off of other people’s money. Sure, we are still getting $100 or more for sign-up bonus. That’s the easiest way to earn money from banks, and we are all doing this. However, by taking advantage of balance transfer, you can make more, just more, from a single credit card.

The previous post is about how to distinguish whether a credit card provides good balance transfer offer. A good balance transfer offer should have three major features:

1). 0% APR Balance transfer length should be longer than 9 months;

2). 0 balance transfer fee is best. However, due to the reported loss of most major US banks, we seldom see 0 fees offers these days. Usually they will charge 3% of your transferred balance, and some are with capped amount like $75 or $99. You should read carefully with the terms & conditions. Usually $75 is acceptable. (Bank of America is charging 3% with unlimited caps.)

3). 0 annual fees, at least first year should be free.

Hare are some cards I would recommend if you want to have a try. (Maybe you will receive good balance transfer offers from credit card issuers. Those targeted offers are not considered here.)

Discover More Card

Miles Card by Discover

Citi Professional Cash Card

Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network

Citi Professional Card (0% APR on purchase)

Citi Upromise Platinum Select MasterCard

Chase offers some 0% APR for 6 months with capped $99 fee. Personally, I don’t think is a good deal. If you need cash immediately, you can find more at Chase.Com.

Application process: All you have to do is to find out your favorite card and then submit application as usual. Maybe they will ask you whether transfer balance to another credit card. If you don’t know how to do this, you can leave it blank. You can do this later on in your online account. Or, if you do know how to use another card to do balance transfer, you can put an amount there. They won’t reject your application for asking too much. For example, if you ask to transfer $20,000 to another card and the issued credit limit is only $10,000, the card issuer will transfer the balance according to you credit limit.

Once your application is approved, what should you do next?

The answer is how to transfer the available credit to your high rate saving or CD accounts.

Most credit card issuers will send you some checks with new card. Or Citi will even allow you to get a balance transfer check online! However, you should read carefully with the associated checks. Cash advance? You can also call the card issuer to confirm what you can do with the checks. I can deposit the checks from WaMu directly to my checking account with the checks received along with my new WaMu card. I call them up and confirmed that I can do this. I also wrote down the ID of the customer service representative.

Another way to do balance transfer is to transfer the balance to another credit card (This card doesn’t have to carry balance.). For example, you have new card A with balance transfer offer, and another card B. You can request to transfer balance from A to B. Once your request gets approved, you can see the balance on card B is negative. Then just go ahead and request a balance refund check from card B. You can deposit the check to you personal account. Again, Citi is most friendly with credit refund!

I have a special page about high rate saving accounts. You may check out there to find one for you to earn free money.