Transferring your credit card balance is a procedure that involves several steps. None of the steps is difficult, but you don’t want to leave anything out. Before you transfer your balance, however, you need to nail down some facts about the card you’re transferring the balance to.

Often the new card will offer a very low or even 0% teaser interest rate for the first few months. You need to know how long the grace period for paying off your old balance lasts. If it’s three months, you need to be certain you can pay off that balance within that time. If you’re a day late, your interest rate will jump, possibly to a higher rate than you had on your old credit card.

Also, read the tiny print carefully. With some balance transfers, only the original balance transfer can be made without paying a balance transfer fee. There are other cases where every other balance transfer is free. If you decide to go through with it, you don’t want a free balance transfer of $58.00 and a non-free balance transfer of $2,499.00, so plan accordingly.

Once you’re sure about the transfer, you ask the new credit card company for a balance transfer form. Sometimes you can do this online. Here is what you do.

Send in the minimum payment to the old card on time because you don’t know how long it will take for the balance transfer to be completed. It could take 2 to 4 weeks.

Sign up for the new card, preferably online.

Fill out the balance transfer form.

When you receive notice of the balance transfer to the new card, call the old company to verify that the balance has been transferred. You might want to make a note of the date and time of your call and the name of the customer service rep you talk to.

When you get a billing statement from the old company with zero balance, you’ll know it worked. At this point, close the old account, and ask them to please give the major credit reporting bureaus statements that the account was closed at your request and not theirs.

Transferring your credit card balance to a new, lower rate card can save you lots of money if your new card has a lower interest rate and/or a teaser rate. But you have to be disciplined about paying off that transferred balance, and you need to make sure you won’t end up paying fees for balance transfers that offset the savings.

Peter Carville is a freelance article writer who writes for Financial Facts about the current financial news and the credit crunch.

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