I am a Bank of America customer, and I have a BankAmericard Rewards Visa credit card through and with Bank of America. Long story short, my APRs are 16% on purchases, 19% on cash advances. Credit limit is ,500, and I have a ,000 balance (with ,000 in purchases, ,000 in cash advances). I recently graduated from grad school, and racked up just about all the debt during school.

I have a stable job and can contribute 0 – ,000 per month (depending on the month) to paying the credit card balance, while adding roughly 0-400 in purchases to the balance. So, basically the balance is reduced by 0 to 0 per month, depending on the circumstances.

On Friday, I received a letter from Bank of America with three (3) valid "Check Cash Advance" checks that can be used as cash advances. BofA is offering a "promotional" APR of 5.99% on "qualifying Check Cash Advances," with a fee of 4% of each transaction. Basically, these are cash advance checks that carry a 5.99% APR, which is considerably less than the current APR of 19% on cash advances via my credit card. The expiration date on these checks is 9/1/10, so about a month from now. If I use any of the checks, I have until March 2011 to have the 5.99% APR tagged on the balance, at which point it would get bumped up to 13.24%… which is still a hell of a lot better than both my current purchase APR (16%) and cash advance APR (19%).

The letter says "Bank of America wants to say thank you with this limited-time rate on Check Cash Advances that can help you pay down your higher rate balances faster."

So here are my questions:

1) How do I use these checks? It’s not a typical check, it’s a cash advance check. So can I only use them to receive cash — or can I use them to pay retailers directly?

2) Can I "refinance" my ,000 credit card debt (which carries about a 17-18% APR) by making a Check Cash Advance of ,000, thereby replacing my ,000/18% APR balance with a ,000/5.99% APR balance?

Under question 2), I could either send the ,000 check directly to Bank of America’s accounts receivable department, OR just cash the check at Bank of America and use the cash to pay the ,000 balance.

But it sounds fishy and sketchy, OBVIOUSLY. I would be borrowing money from my credit card in order to pay the balance on the same credit card, while lowering my interest rate from 17% to 6%.

Does this sound too good to be true?

Also, bonus points for those who DO NOT include advice about saving, spending, and overall thrift tips. I appreciate the concern, though

Thanks in advance, Yahoo users!

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