Kind of mixed answers. Tomfaranda--I agree with your logic, although I needed to confirm with some real world experience. As I mentioned in my original post, what seems logical to you and me is not necessarily the same rules that the banks play by.

Oh, by the way, my friend is not yet eligible for Social Security if he's forced to retire within a year. Hmmm, I guess he'll be eligible to start withdrawing from his retirement account.

I noted with interest one provision of the Senate legislation passed yesterday--the requirement that the banks apply payments to balances with the highest interest rates first, rather than the usual practice of applying it to the lowest rate first. That is always a big "Gotcha!" to the unaware when they do balance transfers.

If you do a balance transfer to a new card, just don't put anything else on that card until it is paid off! Any new purchases on that card will be charged interest and minimum finance charges until the balance transfer balance is fully paid off because all your payments are going towards paying down the low rate balance transfer amount first. If this change makes it to the final bill signed by the President, then people can actually pay off the amounts that are generating interest charges before paying off the low interest balance.

That could spell the end of the sweet "0% APR for 12 months" deals. Probably not completely disappear, but likely that 0% part will be some higher amount or the grace period significantly shortened. I'm sure that they'll come up with new ways to fleece the unwary.