If you’re using a balance transfer, say one of the in vogue 0% interest, no fee balance transfers, to pay off some of your existing debt, good for you. Nothing gives you more breathing room than a twelve month balance transfer that lets you put all of your payments towards the principal, but it’s crucial that you don’t spend any more money on credit or you will be digging yourself into a deeper hole - which are steps in the absolute wrong direction. See, the point of a 0% balance transfer is to make it so that all of your payments are going towards principal, if you’re increasing that principal while you’re making payments… isn’t that counter productive?

What’s also doubly bad is that if you make purchases on the card that you took the balance transfer, you actually pay off the 0% interest debt first and your purchases accrue interest at the regular interest rate, which can be very very high. So, if you have to spend, don’t do it on the card with the transfer and try to keep it to a minimum.

The Citi Professional Rewards card has been out for quite a while now and now Citi has announced the introduction of the Citi Professional Cash card, which is like the original Professional card except it offers cash back instead of ThankYou reward points. The only major difference is the annual limit of $500 in cashback versus the 100,000 ThankYou Network reward points, which is the equivalent of $1000 dollars and the rewards card comes with $100 worth of points for gift cards with first purchase.

So, what do you get with the no annual fee card?

• Fits your professional lifestyle. Designed to make organizing expenses and getting reimbursed easier than ever.
• Earn 3% cash back on purchases at restaurants, gas stations, on auto rentals & at certain office supply merchants. Earn 1% cash back on other purchases.
• 24/7 Personal Business Assistant helps with travel, marketing, discounts & more.
• Online Expense Organizer helps track, categorize and report expenses for billing, reimbursement and taxes.
• Immediate one touch access to a live customer service representative.