<prompt> Human: I am toying with this idea but it seems unconventional so I am wondering if there is a pitfall that I am not seeing. I have a new credit card with a 0 rate for 15 months. I also have a student loan for 10,000 at 6ish interest. My plan is to max the card out the first month with normal expenses and bills 1500 limit and instead of paying it in full like I do normally I will just make a 100 payment each month and stop using the card for 15 months. I will then put the excess in my bank account to my student loan. I normally pay extra on the loan anyways but will take 100 out of that extra payment and use it for the 100 a month to pay the card in 15 months. This would essentially be free money right considering the lower interest. And more money from my normal payments would be toward principal too. The only downside I can see is risk that I somehow fall behind on the card and cant pay it off by the end of the 0 interest period. This can be mitigated by my good credit meaning that I can qualify for other 0 interest cards after 15 months. Of course there is a balance transfer fee but at 3 I still would have a lower interest rate on whatever the remainder of the balance is compared to the rate I would pay had I kept the money in the loan. Am I crazy?  <response>: I dont like this idea because if you do it correctly, its going to save you less than 100. How? Because this kind of idea saves you more money the longer you take to pay off the debt. If you start with the plan of paying this thing off really quickly, if wont save you much at all but you will be in much better shape overall.I modeled it for you with different pay-off schedules and under the two different scenarios. Here are the results:Assumptions made for the calcs: 1. By putting 1500 on the cc in month 1, you freed up 1500 of actual cash which you threw at the loan. 2. The credit card always pays off in 15 months because you are paying 100 per month on it.If you only pay 100month toward the student loan you will pay 3897 in interest by the time you pay it off.If you do the credit card deal and pay 100 per month toward that debt for 15 months AND pay 100 per month on the CC, you will pay 2618 in interest by the time you pay off the student loan which makes getting the credit card win this round because it saves you 1279! Unfortunately it took you about 11 years to pay it off.Lets speed it up.If you only pay 200 on the loan and 100 on the CC, you will save only 68 by virtue of doing the CC deal. 68!Pay 300 loan and 100 CC - save 61.400100 - Save 58500100 - 57.600100 - 55.The point is, this trick is extremely low impact unless youre planning to pay this 10k off over the next decade. If you start flowing some real money at it, its a wash and not at all worth the risk.Tell me how much of your income you plan to throw at debt each month and Ill model your actual situation for you. 