 TITLE: What Happens After a Balance Transfer? CONTENT: Avoid New Purchases With Your Balance Transfer Card\n---------------------------------------------------\nIt's not just the old cards that you have to worry about when thinking about running up balances. Making purchases on the card to which you've transferred your balances is a bad idea as well, for several reasons:\n*   For starters, it's obviously counterproductive to add to a balance you're trying to pay down.\n*   Many cards that offer balance transfers at low or 0% introductory rates charge their regular interest rates on new purchases. Putting new charges on such a card during the intro period essentially creates two separate balances on the account—one for new purchases accruing interest at the normal rate and another for the transferred balance at the teaser rate. This can be confusing and makes it harder to see progress toward lowering overall debt.\n*   In cases where two separate interest rates apply to balances, card issuers may apply your payments to the zero-interest portion of the balance first. In that case, you'd accumulate interest charges on any new purchases you make until you've paid off your entire transferred balance. If your balance transfer card works that way, it'll likely make more sense to use a different card if you absolutely must use one for an emergency expense. END