Essentials Balance Transfer Calculator Spreadsheet Template for Google Sheets & Excel

Your current card first - the balance, the rate and what you pay each month - then the offer in full: the transfer fee, the promotional rate, how long it lasts and the rate that takes over when it ends. That last field is the one a quick comparison can leave out, and it is where the arithmetic turns. A promotional rate is a deadline as much as a discount, and what happens after it depends on a rate that is often higher than the one you left. Recording it means the comparison covers the whole arrangement rather than the good part of it. Underneath, the summary: the fee in money rather than percent, the balance you would actually start with, what each path costs in total, and the difference between them.

A row per month, running both paths in parallel. For staying: the balance, the interest that month and the cumulative interest. For transferring: the same three, with the promotional rate applying until it expires and the post-promotional rate afterwards. Reading the two cumulative columns against each other is the whole exercise. They start apart - the transfer is behind by the fee on day one - and the gap closes and then reverses at a specific month you can point to. If your balance clears before the promotional rate ends, the reversal is permanent; if it does not, the two lines start converging again, and the schedule shows exactly when. The schedule runs sixty months. A balance still outstanding after that is not carried further, which is worth knowing if the payment is small relative to the debt.

Six figures: what staying costs, what transferring costs with the fee included, the difference between them, the fee itself in money, the break-even month, and how many months the transfer path takes to clear the balance - then two charts. The difference is reported as arithmetic rather than as a recommendation - it depends entirely on the rates and the payment you entered, and the payment is the input most likely to change. The break-even month is worked out directly from the schedule's two cumulative columns, so it names the same crossover the chart shows rather than a separate estimate. The charts plot the two balances and the two cumulative costs, which is where the crossover becomes visible rather than inferred.