Here's some background before I ask my question...
We've been paying off debt like good little Mustachians, cutting fat from our budget, living on less, saving more, opening targeted savings accounts, all that good stuff. We're paying off our last credit card after working the debt snowball scenario. Currently, it has a 9.99% rate. We are planning to pay it off in 14 months (barring any major household disasters or child issues). If we transfer the balance to a new card (that I would have to open to get the 0% for 15 mo deal), we would save over $900 in finance charges. We would have to pay 3% to transfer the amount, but that is still much less than the $ we would lose if we keep this debt it on our current card. The last card we paid off is offering 1.99% for 12 months, but would convert to 14.99% after that, leaving us to pay a higher rate for two - three months. Of course the balance would be smaller, but it's still my money wasted. And we'd add the 3% transfer fee to that debt, so we'd only save half as much in fees than if we transferred to a new card.
I know you are all going to yell at me about opening a new card. Here's the deal: I use CC responsibly. Learned my lesson and all that. This debt is from a bad year with little income, major car disasters and other expensive household issues that all happened at once. We didn't have the cash to pay for all of it at the time. We haven't used this card for two years, just been paying it down slowly. We are in a much better financial situation now. I'm bringing in more freelance money, we're saving a ton more than we used to and we always pay off the few CCs we do use.
I'm torn. I know I shouldn't open a new card, but I hate to see my money wasted as I pay $900 in fees for the next 14 months. Plus there's the whole "can't close a CC account, because it's bad for your credit score" so this card will hang around long past when we pay it off. We have great credit and pay on time. We just need to get this last block of debt paid off and we can start doing even better things (stocks, bonds, college savings) with that chunk of $ we'll have each month.
What say you, Mustachians? Please don't yell. I'm trying here. :)