Should You Consider a 0% Credit Card Offer?

You get stacks of them in your mailbox every week.  Those credit card offers promising 0% interest on balance transfers and even new purchases until some date far out in the future (usually six months to a year). You wonder if this might be a way to not only pare down some of the interest you may be paying on your other cards, but to start getting out of debt altogether; maybe. There are many things to consider and most of them revolve around you.

What happens very often in the real world when consumers take some credit card company up on these kind of offers is that they do indeed manage to realize an interest savings at first, but when push comes to shove and they've got more month at the end of the money again. It's very tempting to just go and charge up the old credit line once again, and before you know it, they're back in the same situation again.

'Well', you say, 'why didn't they just cut up or close those old accounts when they took out the new credit line?' Well, that may have worked for their spending, but it would have also given their credit score a ding, as seasoned accounts count for more than new ones. 

This puts the ball back in the consumer's court: will they be responsible enough to go the route of keeping credit lines alive while reducing their interest, or is the temptation too great? This is a decision each has to make for themselves.