Yes, it is very, very wise to pay for everything with a Pay Pal credit card-funded payment, so you can exercise a charge-back or the threat of a charge-back if something goes wrong.

What you suggest will work -- transfer your PayPal balance funds to your linked bank account so your PayPal balance will be zero so you can opt to pay via your credit card.

There are two simpler ways pay via PayPal and a credit card:

(1) the old way is to (a) clear out your PayPal balance by sending the entire balance to one of your email addresses (that does not have a PayPal account under that email address), or to the email address of a friend who does not have a PayPal account under that email address. (b) Then you send off the credit card-funded PayPal payment to the person you are buying something from. (c) Then you go to look at the transaction you did in (a), above, and you will see that the amount you sent to the email address that does not have a PayPal account is UNCLEARED, so you simply click the appropriate button there to void/cancel the transaction! By doing this you will automatically have the old funds balance back in your PayPal account, and the funds won't have to go from your PayPal account to your bank account and back to your PayPal account.

(2) now there is a simpler way to accomplish this. Apply for a "PayPal Plus Credit Card" at PayPal. You will be able to pay for items using that credit card (see "funding options" on the regular PayPal form) even though you have a balance in your PayPal account! You can even opt to have the "PayPal Plus Credit Card" be your default way to pay for things through PayPal; that is, you won't have to select it as a paying option each time; it does that automatically. I don't believe you can do this with an ordinary credit card, at least years ago when I looked.

Robert