Credit cards offering zero interest on balance transfers are a lifeline.

HEAR "rate rises" and your thoughts probably immediately fly to your mortgage. But the fact is, it's often not the mortgage that gets people into financial strife, it's the credit card debt they're trying to service alongside it.

Of those struggling to meet mortgage repayments, mortgage insurer Genworth Financial recently found 71 per cent carried over credit card debt, compared with a national average of only 52 per cent.

This is a big worry when you consider that mortgage interest rates have fallen an average 3.7 per cent since the RBA began aggressively cutting the official rate in September last year, according to researcher infochoice. But credit card rates dropped only 1.2 per cent over the same period.

So credit card debt is setting you back more and more. And that's ignoring any additional money you spend.

As Prime Minister Kevin Rudd lamented in his recent essay, between 1996 and 2007 our credit card debt increased by 460 per cent.

Thankfully the credit crunch has alerted us to the dangers of our debt binge and in the past six months we have collectively increased our credit card repayments, with the RBA noting spikes in December and April that corresponded with Federal Government stimulus payments.

But before rates rise and it becomes even harder to get back in the black, it's vital to ensure you are giving yourself the very best chance of doing so now.

While your provider may play silly buggers with its interest rate, others offer you the chance to "get out of jail free" with a 0 per cent balance transfer credit card.

Granted, there's not nearly as many of these as there were. This once-burgeoning slice of the market is one of the many to be silently pummelled by the GFC. But infochoice tells me there still exist six cards ??? issued by ANZ, Citibank, Coles, Macquarie Bank and NAB ??? that let new customers pay no interest on transferred balances for a period of between four and six months.

The concern is that less than 30 per cent of Australians are aware this opportunity is available, says research by comparison site Credit Card Finder and many don't fully understand how it works.

The latter is crucial. Because as you would guess, these cards come with their tricks.

Firstly, any new spending attracts what is probably a punitive interest rate ??? and usually no interest-free period applies.

Not that that really matters because you will pay that punitive interest rate until you clear your entire transferred balance anyway.

This is, of course, how providers can afford to offer such too-good-to-be-true deals. But this also means beating them at their own game is as simple as never using the card ??? and clearing what you transfer before you will start to pay interest.

So once you bust out of debt, how can you stay that way?

Swap a credit card for a debit card - you can only spend what you have.

Re-embrace that long-lost friend lay-by. What better way to force yourself to quickly amass the money than not to take possession of the item until you do?

Make like Isla Fisher in Confessions of a Shopaholic and freeze your credit card in a bowl of water. Just don't be tempted to bust it out of retirement with a stiletto!