How To Budget Your Money With The 50/20/30 Guideline
Whether you're a parent with two kids or a recent college grad working your first job, our 50/20/30 guideline can help you assess your budget. LearnVest Planners often use this approach working with new clients to help illustrate the big picture of where their money is going.
Our guideline breaks your budget down into three buckets (rather than the seemingly infinite categories of some traditional budgeting). It’s designed to help you figure out how much you may want to allocate to each area every month, and can also help you determine the order in which your money can be allocated.
50/20/30 Broken Down
1. Fixed Costs These are bills and expenses that don’t vary much from month to month, like rent or mortgage payments, utilities and car payments. We also include subscriptions, such as gym memberships and Netflix accounts, in fixed costs because you’re committed to paying them on a monthly basis.
When it comes to fixed costs, our Planners generally suggest that you aim to keep your monthly total no more than 50% of your take-home pay.
2. Financial Goals LearnVest Planners typically recommend putting at least 20% of your take-home pay toward important payments or contributions that will help you secure your financial foundation. We believe there are three essential goals everyone should strive for: paying down credit card debt, saving for retirement, and building an emergency fund. But your financial goals can also include larger savings priorities, like a down payment on a new home.
3. Flexible Spending Finally, consider budgeting no more than 30% of your take-home pay toward flexible spending. These are day-to-day expenses that can vary from month to month, like eating out, groceries, shopping, hobbies, entertainment, or gas.
We include groceries in flexible spending because even though food is a necessity in your budget, how you spend on food can vary. Some weeks you might eat out more, while others you may buy more groceries to cook at home. At LearnVest, our Planners often say that it doesn’t really matter what you spend your money on each month in this category, as long as you're aware of your spending and not going over your total flex budget each month.
One Note About Retirement
As you might have noticed, the 50/20/30 guideline applies only to take-home pay. Any contributions you make to retirement before your paycheck hits your bank account are not included. For that reason, you may actually be contributing more toward your financial goals than this breakdown would suggest. And you may find that it's a good thing to keep that retirement money out of sight, out of mind!
How the 50/20/30 Guideline Can Apply to Your Own Budget
If you’re just starting to put together a budget, the 50/20/30 Guideline can serve as a useful benchmark for how to divvy up your paycheck. When it comes down to it, though, how you spend (and save) your money depends on your specific goals and lifestyle.
As part of the LearnVest Action Program, you can work with a dedicated Planner who can give you a clear plan of action for your money, including helping you to create a budget that has the right balance for you. If you’re curious, you can get started by trying out our online budgeting tool for free.
Some people just don't like cats. That's okay. Some people don't like pizza. Or dogs. Or Harry Potter. But some cat-haters aren't satisfied with not owning cats themselves. They need to drag the rest of us down with them.
The first thing you notice when you dig around in the seedy underworld of cat-bashing is that it's an old hobby. The haters have left their mark across poetry, literature, and art for centuries.
"There's always going to be someone in a group who's going to stand up and say cats are aloof, manipulative little devils," says cat researcher John Bradshaw.
In his 1922 cultural history of the domestic cat, The Tiger in the House, Carl Van Vechten notes, "One is permitted to assume an attitude of placid indifference in the matter of elephants, cockatoos, H.G. Wells, Sweden, roast beef, Puccini, and even Mormonism, but in the matter of cats it seems necessary to take a firm stand....Those who hate the cat hate him with a malignity which, I think, only snakes in the animal kingdom provoke to an equal degree."
Joseph Stromberg at Vox is only the most recent ailurophobe to launch a broadside against the feline species. His 28-paragraph essay on the supposed evils of Felis catus, published last week, tells readers that cats are "selfish, unfeeling, environmentally harmful creatures."
"Those who hate the cat hate him with a malignity which, I think, only snakes in the animal kingdom provoke to an equal degree."
His argument breaks down into four simple points: "Your cat probably doesn't love you." "Your cat isn't really showing you affection." "Cats are an environmental disaster." And, "Your cat might be driving you crazy."
We called Bradshaw, an internationally recognized cat and dog researcher and author of several books on pet ownership, including Cat Sense, for his learned opinion on the "science" of cat-bashing.
Feline Love Isn't Needy
The Difference Between Dogs And Cats
Haters want you to believe cats don't really care about their people. Stromberg points to a series of studies by Daniel Mills at the University of London and other researchers that show cats don't look to humans for guidance in unfamiliar situations. Abandon your dog (or child) in a place it's never seen before, and it's likely to run to you on your return. Cats are more likely to explore the space on their own terms.
Compared to a stranger, the dogs become more disturbed when their owners leave, and interact with them more when they return. By contrast, Mills' cat experiments — which are still ongoing and haven't yet been published, but were featured in a BBC special last year—haven't come to the same conclusion. On the whole, the cats seem disinterested both when their owners depart and return.
Meanwhile, other experiments carried out by a pair of Japanese researchers have provided evidence for a fact already known to most cat owners: they can hear you calling their name, but just don't really care. As detailed in a study published last year, the researchers gathered 20 cats (one at a time) and played them recordings of three different people calling their name—two strangers, plus their owners.
Regardless of the order, the cats consistently reacted differently upon hearing their owner's voice (in terms of ear and head movement, as graded by independent raters who didn't know which voice belonged to the owner). However, none of them meowed or actually approached the speaker, as though they'd be interested in seeing the person.
Bradshaw says this interpretation draws too much out of limited study—research similar to work he has done himself. "It shows something about cats, but it doesn't show you that cats are not affectionate," he says.
Dogs have evolved to be "almost obsessively" dependent on humans, Bradshaw says. In unfamiliar situations, they look to their humans as sources of stability and guidance, much like small children. Cats, on the other hand, "prefer to deal with things in their own heads."
A creature that fails to run to your side in a strange situation does not necessarily have a cold, unfeeling heart. Some couples show up at parties and hold hands the entire time, talking mostly to one another. Others split up when they arrive, mingle, meet new people. But they still leave together when it ends. Your cat's a mingler—an explorer.
Your Cat Really Is Showing Affection
A Cat Not Faking It
After wedging a seed of doubt into the emotional relationships between humans and their cats, the enemies of felinekind try to insert themselves into the physical expressions of human-feline love. Stromberg is no exception:
Many cats... will rub up against the leg of their owner (or another human) when the person enters a room. It's easy to construe this as a sign of affection. But many researchers interpret this as an attempt, by the cat, to spread his or her scent — as a way to mark territory. Observations of semi-feral cats show that they commonly rub up against trees or other objects in the exact same way, which allows them to deposit pheromone-containing secretions that naturally come out of their skin.
In other words, all the squirming and rubbing cats lavish on their owners are just the feline equivalent to a dog lifting its leg and peeing all over a fire hydrant.
Bradshaw says this notion is way off-base. "Superficially, [rubbing against humans] looks like scent marking," he says, but "the display that goes on when a cat raises its tail and rubs its sides against another cat, or a person, is a social action."
"Like all genuine affectionate relationships, [cat cuddling] is a two-way street."
Some researchers suggest the behavior has a its roots in the creation of a "clan scent" for packs of wild cats, but no one has published proof. What's important, Bradshaw says, is the interaction between creatures. The raised tail is a signal of good intent. When two cats know each other well they will rub their whole bodies against each other, including their sides, which have no scent glands. They often then lie down together and purr. Cats will do the same thing with their owners. Claiming this behavior is no deeper than a wild cat rubbing its face on tree bark is like saying that human handshakes are mostly about checking for secret weapons.
A 2013 study supposedly shows cats hate when humans pet them.
The research indeed found that cats pumped stress hormones into their bloodstreams when they were petted excessively. But Bradshaw points out that the research was conducted in Brazil, a country where house cats are far less common than small dogs. He thinks pet owners used to rough-and-tumble dogs might not prepared to handle cats in ways they enjoy. The cats grabbed and picked up for the study were reacting to a long history of unpleasant interactions, not simple human touch.
"Like all genuine affectionate relationships, [cat cuddling] is a two-way street," he says. "Dogs put up with harsher treatment. Yank on a choke chain, and the dog bounces back. Cats say goodbye."
Your Cat Is Too Clumsy To Threaten Wildlife
Threats To All Birdkind
Perhaps the most damning charge against cats is that they are natural murderers who can disrupt local ecosystems. Stromberg pounced gleefully once again:
In the US, domestic cats are an invasive species—they originated in Asia. And research shows that, whenever they're let outside, cats' carnivorous activity has a devastating effect on wild bird and small mammal populations, even if the cats are well-fed.
So what's an environmentally-conscious cat lover to do? Bradshaw says not to worry. It turns out, as long as your cat wasn't born feral or on a farm, it's probably a clumsy hunter. Birds and rodents zip away from its plodding, obvious approach.
Bradshaw says cats learn to kill from their mothers. In the wild, a kitten follows its mom on many hunts in the first eight weeks of its life. She teaches the skills of sneaking up on prey and pouncing with lethal precision. But housecats born at home or to breeders miss that crucial step. Kittens instead spend their first eight weeks yowling at cotton balls and bits of string. Unless you trained your pet in the art of war before the end of its second month—a crucial period in its development—it's probably next to useless against live prey (even if it does sometimes get lucky).
"Obviously there's some deep ancestral memory of stalking prey," he says, "but a cat by itself is usually not a very good hunter."
Whenever local fauna succumb to feline hunting, he says, "it almost always turns out to be feral cats." Australian experiments with 24-hour cat curfews turned out to have minimal impacts. Still, the ASPCA suggests keeping cats indoors to prolong their lives, so it's probably a good idea. Also, spayed and neutered housecats will never birth feral kittens that could endanger wildlife.
If you really want to do right by the environment, Bradshaw says, cats are way better than dogs.
Okay, Your Cat May Give You A Parasite That Controls Your Thoughts
Toxoplasma gondii parasites form a cyst in a mouse brain.
Jitinder P. Dubey via Wikimedia Commons
Stromberg is wrong about cat love, but there's a chance he's right about horrible brain-controlling parasites in cat poop. Even Bradshaw can't defend your kitten now.
See, there's this parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. It enters the brains of prey animals like mice and alters their behavior to make them less afraid of predators. These bold, addled rodents ride their parasitic high all the way into your favorite pet's gnashing jaws, and some of those parasites make their way into your cat's litterbox. From there it's a short jump to a human owner's body.
Some reaserchers suspect that humans infected with T. gondii are susceptible to its nefarious mind control as well. Here's what Kathleen McCauliffe wrote about the parasite in her extensive coverage for the Atlantic:
The subjects who tested positive for the parasite had significantly delayed reaction times. [Parasite researcher Jaroslav] Flegr was especially surprised to learn, though, that the protozoan appeared to cause many sex-specific changes in personality. Compared with uninfected men, males who had the parasite were more introverted, suspicious, oblivious to other people’s opinions of them, and inclined to disregard rules. Infected women, on the other hand, presented in exactly the opposite way: they were more outgoing, trusting, image-conscious, and rule-abiding than uninfected women.
Infected men were more likely to wear rumpled old clothes; infected women tended to be more meticulously attired, many showing up for the study in expensive, designer-brand clothing. Infected men tended to have fewer friends, while infected women tended to have more. And when it came to downing the mystery fluid, reports Flegr, “the infected males were much more hesitant than uninfected men. They wanted to know why they had to do it. Would it harm them?” In contrast, the infected women were the most trusting of all subjects. “They just did what they were told,” he says.
Flegr goes on to note that even infected people may not be heavily impacted by the bug, and that cat poop is not the only way humans catch it. (In fact, it's incredibly common.) Not all researchers agree with Flegr's dire interpretations of the evidence, though T. gondii does turn dangerous when patients have damaged immune systems.
Ultimately, yes, your cat probably loves you, but that might just be the mind-controlling parasite talking.
The first time I left the United States, I was traveling as a student in the Middle East. Like many who leave home only to learn as much about their own culture as the one they have journeyed to, I quickly found myself a student of much more than language, history, and religion. So often it is in the experience of life outside your familiar world that the first glimpses of your own worldview come into focus. I was soon troubled by the previously unconsidered thought of how much my environment shaped my understanding of the world, life, faith, and God. Everything suddenly seemed so much more complicated than it was before.
Though the questions dredged up within this new world would plague my thought-life for years to come, the experience was eventually eye-opening. But in the midst of it, I was an inconsolable muddle of doubt. Did I really know anything authentically? Could anyone really know that God is real? And if this was the land of Christ’s beginnings, where were all of the Christians? On a particularly despairing day of questions, I went to the library bemoaning my loss of simplicity and hoping for some clarity in the trusted form of words. I gathered a few philosophy books and papers on early Christianity and sat down to read. It was at this library and in the midst of this frustrated morning when I met a monk named Petri.
Petri listened to my troubled doubts about the God I thought I knew and the world that seemed so full of people contradicting this knowledge, seeing other gods, or attesting to contrary information. He responded with gentle questioning: Could God not be a greater mystery than what fills the small places you hold in mind?Did Christ come to bring ease or help or answers? Or was truth the measure, in the form of a person? And then he told me not to despair of a complicated world, but to pray instead to see. “The world of souls is a mysterious place after all. But where you see an eye of the kingdom, rejoice. For God is near.”
At the time, it was a comfort (and a Finnish monk in Jerusalem was an unlikely comforter) to hear a fellow believer remind me that God is beyond my ability to make logical sense of everything, while affirming that God who came near in spirit and truth wills to be known even today. But as I struggled under the weight of a crumbling worldview, I don’t think I fully realized the relief his words offered—like pillars to a faltering house—until I returned to the gospel I had doubted.
Petri was quoting Jesus. To a crowd full of many perspectives, opinions, and creeds, Jesus spoke of eyes and light. He told a group of religious men that outward religion was not enlightening, but the truth and true love of God illumines the whole person. “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness” (Luke 11:34-35).
Into a world of complex religious practices, differing religious philosophies, and intermingling religious beliefs Jesus came and called to those with ears to hear and eyes to see. He gently but completely crumbled worldviews and crushed expectations. Some responded with closed minds and hearts. Others were made to see.
In our complicated world, Jesus is still the light that shines in the darkness, and he is still not overcome. His light shines even in the most unlikely of places and in the darkest corners of life. Even when a worldview is crumbling, he is calling the viewer to a greater kingdom and to eyes that will truly see. Today, wherever you find the light of his truth, a kindred soul, or an eye of the kingdom, rejoice. For God is near.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
This amazing method of clearing sinus congestion takes no more than 20 seconds and uses only your tongue and thumb.
The Reasons for Nasal Congestion
Nasal congestion normally happens as a result of sinus infection and colds. Various infections caused by bacteria and viruses block the nasal passages, making breathing quite hard.
Although this condition typically eases within a week, you can treat it much faster using this great method.
How to Clear Your Sinuses in 20 Seconds
You simply do the following:
Push your tongue against the roof of your mouth and put your thumb between your eyebrows.
Apply pressure with your thumb for 20 seconds. Your sinuses will begin to drain.
How to Explain This
It all comes down to the vomer bone, which is a bone that runs vertically within the nasal cavity. According to Lisa De Stefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine, this technique can help the vomer bone to move back and forth, which motion alleviates congestion and allows your sinuses to drain.
Four Additional DIY Remedies for Nasal Congestion
In case you find this method ineffective, you can try other treatments at home. These four folk remedies are extremely beneficial for clearing nasal congestion.
Organic Apple Cider Vinegar
This remedy is quite simple as you only need to mix 8 ounces of warm water with two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and one tablespoon of honey, or you can take one tablespoon ACV three times a day. It will take just a few days before your sinuses clear up.
Alternatively, you can mix half a cup ACV with half a cup of water, heat it to a boiling point, and inhale the vapor with closed mouth and eyes.
Turmeric
The strong anti-inflammatory properties of turmeric come from its active ingredient, curcumin. You can alleviate your sinusitis by simply sprinkling some turmeric on your meal.
Nasal Saline Rinse
This can be a bit uncomfortable because the rinse goes through one nostril and out of the other in order to clear the sinuses. However, this method has proved quite successful for many people. Simply mix ¼ tsp sea salt with a cup of warm water.
Tip: If you are doing saline rinse for the first time, it’s best to ask someone for assistance.
Oregano Oil
Although hard to obtain and quite pricey, oregano oil is highly beneficial for treatment of sinusitis. You can simply add it in your food, or steam it over the stove and inhale it so as to alleviate your sinus infection.
Medicine Shows Growing Potential to Repair and Regenerate Body Parts
The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine uses 3-D bio-printing to build tissue and, in some cases, entire organs for human transplantation.Illustration: Wake Forest Baptist Health
By Diane Cole
The idea of the body healing itself may be close to making a huge leap forward. Much closer than we think.
The rapidly evolving field of regenerative medicine—including stem cells, 3-D printing and bioengineering, among other technologies—is helping repair, and even regenerate, body parts and tissues damaged by disease, trauma or age.
“Regenerative medicine is not trying to create the bionic man but to harness the healing powers of the human body and buttress them,” says Andre Terzic, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Regenerative Medicine in Rochester, Minn. That means treating chronic or degenerative ailments and replacing failing organs. In the U.S. alone, more than 120,000 people are on organ-transplant waiting lists.
Predictions, of course, are not always borne out. But “we’re making an awful lot of solid discoveries,” says Rosemarie Hunziker, director of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering in Bethesda, Md.
Here’s a peek into what regenerative medicine’s human body shop may offer in the next decade.
The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is using 3-D bio-printing to automate the process of building human organs for eventual use in transplant surgery. An earlier version of the accompanying graphic stated incorrectly that printed organs have already been implanted in humans. (July 10, 2015)
15 Habits That Will Totally Transform Your Productivity
People who manage to get a lot accomplished each day aren't super human, they've just mastered a few simple habits. Some may be easy to guess: Keep your desk organized and aim for around eight hours of sleep a night. But others, like taking a mid-day nap or complaining, might surprise you.
Here are 15 easy ways to make every day more productive:
Creativity may arise from chaos, but a litter-strewn office probably isn’t helping you get stuff done. "Attention is programmed to pick up what’s novel," says Josh Davis, director of research at the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Two Awesome Hours. Visible files remind you of unfinished tasks. An unread book is temptation for procrastination. Even if you don’t think you’re noticing the disorder, it hurts your ability to focus.
People with neat offices are more persistent and less frustrated and weary, according to a recent study in Harvard Business Review, which found that a clean desk helps you stick with a task more than one and a half times longer. "While it can be comforting to relax in your mess, a disorganized environment can be a real obstacle," says Grace Chae, a professor at Fox School of Business at Temple University and coauthor of the study.
No matter how crazy your days get, make sure you carve out and ruthlessly protect just 90 minutes—20% of an eight-hour day—for the most important tasks. "Even if you squander the remaining 80% of the day, you can still make great progress if you have spent 90 minutes on your goals or priorities," says Charlotte, North Carolina–based productivity coach Kimberly Medlock.
Think you can get more done by tacking on extra hours? According to a 2014 study by Stanford professor John Pencavel, who examined data from laborers during World War I, output was proportionate to time worked—up to 49 hours. Beyond that, it rose at a decreasing rate, and those who put in 70 hours had the same productivity as someone who worked 56 hours.
You might believe you’re ignoring your iPhone, but unless it’s fully turned off, it’s a major distraction. In a report published this year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, researchers from Florida State University found that even if you don’t look at your phone when it buzzes, the sound makes your mind wander.
How Alexandra Samuel, author of Work Smarter With Social Media, avoids getting distracted when she’s waiting for an important message:
1. Find the email-to-text format for your cell-phone provider with a quick Google search. Verizon, for example, is @vtext.com, so if your mobile number is 555-123-4567, your address is 5551234567@vtext.com.
2. Using that address, set up your email so it forwards messages from a specific sender to your cell phone via text (in Outlook, find "Rules" in the "Tools" task bar).
3. Shut down your inbox and ignore your emails while focusing on more pressing tasks, knowing you’ll be alerted when the important message comes in.
People are more efficient at things that come naturally, while tasks that feel like a struggle are likely to impede progress. If you can, delegate the duties that feel like an effort, and instead focus on "high value activities." "HVAs are within your mission, leverage your strengths, and create impact or change," says Hillary Rettig, author of The Seven Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block. "They also create clarity and open your schedule." Delegating your non–HVA activities also helps create community. After all, they could very well be someone else’s HVAs.
Many meetings don’t have a particular agenda, but it’s important to know what you want to accomplish going in. "Keep meetings short by limiting the agenda to three items or less," says Alan Eisner, professor of management at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business. "Afterward, send out minutes using your agenda so everyone knows what to work on."
Put nonagenda thoughts into an "idea parking lot." "People bring up ideas that are important to them but not on-topic," says Cary Greene, coauthor of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace. "Instead of losing them, write them down." Don’t let the parking lot be a black hole: Assign follow-up steps right at the end of the meeting.
Walking meetings are gaining popularity, but you can get a similar benefit without hitting the hallway. Set a timer for 30 to 45 minutes. When it goes off, have everyone get up and move. "You can stand and shake it out a bit as a group, which lightens everyone up," says workplace psychologist Karissa Thacker. "Moving regularly is good for us in all kinds of ways, including improving our ability to focus."
It might be tough to convince your boss, but researchers from the University of Michigan found that taking a daytime nap counteracts impulsive behavior and boosts tolerance for frustration. The findings also suggest that workplace dozers could be more productive.
Identifying distractions is the first step to avoiding them. Here are the top five workplace attention destroyers, according to a 2015 survey by CareerBuilder:
"We can’t operate at peak performance all day long," says Zaslow. "When I’m feeling my best, I concentrate on important activities like writing. When I’m feeling tired and foggy, I do relatively mindless tasks like dealing with routine emails."
"In order to focus on urgent or meaningful activities, let some other things slide," she says. For example, open your mail just once a week; these days, nothing urgent arrives with a postage stamp on it. And while some organizers will tell you to touch any piece of paper just once, Zaslow is more forgiving. It’s okay to toss less-pressing work in a pile for later, she says.
It’s not surprising that getting more done starts with a good night’s sleep, but it turns out getting too many hours is as bad as too few. Analyzing the sleep and work habits of 3,760 people over seven years, researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found that under-sleepers and oversleepers were both more likely to take extra sick days.
An office with a view sounds like a recipe for mind wandering. Actually, access to sunlight boosts productivity. In a study by the California Energy Commission, workers who sat near a window performed better, processing calls 6% to 12% faster and performing 10% to 25% better on tests that involved mental function and memory recall.
Energize staff by clearly defining expectations and routinely offering positive feedback. According to a recent study by Gallup, companies that engage their workforce see a 65% decrease in turnover, a 21% bump in productivity, and a 10% increase in customer ratings.
But do it the right way. Present your beef with an idea for improvement. "Framing things in terms of solutions lessens the focus on the problem and who might be at fault," says management professor Russell Johnson, coauthor of a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. "It evokes pleasant emotions instead of negative ones that cause mental fatigue."
Exercise not only improves health, it boosts output. And you don’t have to kill yourself in CrossFit—a jog will do. Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand found that a daily 20-minute run helped lab rats complete problem-solving tasks more quickly and efficiently than their nonexercised counterparts.
Although it's ideal to pay off the balance on your credit card each month, sometimes emergencies or life itself gets in the way and you incur a balance you can't fully pay down. The interest on many credit cards can get as high as 25%, but the good news is, you have options. A balance transfer can be a good way to combine multiple credit card balances onto one card or move the complete balance from one to another and save money in the process. But how much can you save with a balance transfer?
What is a balance transfer?
Before we jump into the potential savings a balance transfer can get you, we wanted to make sure you understand what exactly it is. A balance transfer is really quite simple — it allows you to take the balance on your current credit card and transfer it to a new credit card. Why would you want to do that? Well, if you're carrying a balance on a credit card, chances are you're paying too much on interest. By transferring all or part of that balance to a new card with an extended 0% intro APR, you can save yourself money over the long term. Learn more about how they work by reading our balance transfer guide.
How much can you save with a balance transfer?
To illustrate how much you can save with a balance transfer, we determined the projected savings someone with a credit card balance of $1,000, $5,000 or $20,000 to transfer could expect. We compared the savings of transferring from a card with an APR of 20% to a card with a 15-month 0% intro APR and no balance transfer fee — similar to the terms Chase Slate offers.
If your current balance is $1,000, you can save $138 in interest over a 15-month period by transferring your balance to a card with a 0% intro APR and no balance transfer fee.
If your current balance is $5,000, your interest savings with a balance transfer (assuming there’s no balance transfer fee) will be about $693 over a period of 15 months.
If your current balance is $20,000 and you opt to complete a balance transfer to a card without a transfer fee, you will save a whopping $2,769 in interest over the course of 15 months.
These are just estimates, but they illustrate the potential savings at your fingertips if you switch to a balance transfer credit card with a great intro APR offer. Remember that the key is to do a balance transfer when it's going to save you money. While switching from a card with a 20% APR to one with a 15% APR won't save you a lot of money in the long run, especially if there's a fee to transfer the balance, opting for a card with a 0% intro APR for 15, 18 or 21 month will help you get ahead in payments. Also, it's important to keep in mind that while some cards like Chase Slate have an intro $0 balance transfer fee, most charge a 3% or 5% fee to complete each balance transfer. However, even with that fee, you can still save more over the long term since it’s likely that balance transfer fee is a lot lower than your current interest rate, so that shouldn't be a deterrent.
What are the top balance transfer cards?
Now that you know that you can save with a balance transfer, you might be wondering which cards are the best options to transfer your balance to. We rounded up the top-rated cards for balance transfers below.
Chase Slate is a superb choice for people who want to consolidate their high-interest credit cards onto a new card. Not only do cardholders get a 0% intro APR for the first 15 months, but Chase Slate also doesn't charge a balance transfer fee for the first 60 days (after which the fee is $5 or 3% of the total balance, whichever is greater). On top of that, you can also benefit from no penalty APR — meaning your APR won't increase if you are late on a payment — and free monthly Experian FICO scores to help you stay on top of your credit. Unlike most other balance transfer credit cards that require excellent credit, Chase Slate is available to those with good credit. This card is also embedded with chip technology, so you're all set for the switch-over this October.
If 15 months doesn't cut it for you, maybe the 21-month 0% intro APR offered by Citi Simplicity (a NextAdvisor advertiser) will. This card also doesn't charge late fees, annual fees or a penalty rate, making it a great choice for people who want to save money. It should be noted that Citi Simplicity has a balance transfer fee of $5 or 3% of the amount of the transfer, whichever is higher.
Not only does the Citi Diamond Preferred credit card (a NextAdvisor advertiser) also offer a 0% intro APR for 21 months, but it also has a reasonable post-intro APR variable rate as well. Perks are plentiful with this card, which include a personal concierge service, Citi Easy Deals points that you can redeem online for merchandise and gift cards and the ability to choose your own payment due date. The balance transfer fee for this card is the greater of $5 or 3% of the amount transferred.
Rounding out our list, the Discover it card provides a long 0% intro APR (18 months) with the opportunity to earn cash back with any purchase you make, meaning you can earn rewards while you save on interest with this card. You'll earn 5% cash back on purchases within select categories that rotate quarterly (up to $1,500) and 1% unlimited cash back on all other purchases, plus Discover will double your amount of cash back at the end of your first year. There is a balance transfer fee of 3% of each transfer, but you don't have to pay an annual fee with this card.
If you want to learn more about balance transfers and see how much you can save based on the amount you need to transfer and how much you plan to pay per month, head over to our balance transfer credit cards page and use our balance transfer calculator. This calculator can show you the best cards for your amount owed and credit rating, helping you save the maximum amount of money when you transfer.
Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuer. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of the credit card issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the credit card issuer. This content was accurate at the time of this post, but card terms and conditions may change at any time. This site may be compensated through the credit card issuer Affiliate Program.
The Truth About Cancer – A Global Quest Docu-series Starts Oct. 13th
A groundbreaking 9-part docu-series is hitting the airwaves on October 13th at 9:00PM Eastern… but you won’t see it on regular television or even HBO…
It’s “too controversial” for them.
When over 100 doctors, researchers, scientists and survivors from across the globe come together in unity and reveal for the first time their amazing new findings and the truth… about Cancer… it’s not just news — it’s a movement.
If you or anyone you love has been touched by cancer, you owe it to them and to yourself to watch this explosive FREE docu-series, “The Truth About Cancer: A Global Quest”.
Simply click the button above for exclusive access.
