Money Tips: Suggestions for Credit Cards with Good Balance Transfer Offers?

Posted On: August 14, 2006

Guest: Snuffy
Post subject: Suggestions for Credit Cards with Good Balance Transfer Offers?
Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 8:05 pm

My strategy is starting to come together.

JaneiR36 wrote:
Citi is really good about sending true no-fee 0% APR checks if you qualify for one of their accounts. You can then write a check up to your full credit limit to yourself. Chase gave me checks on my 0% APR for 12 months new account, but they had fees attached and the CSR I spoke to would not waive it.

Alternatively, accounts like Capital One, for instance, frequently come with no-fee purchase checks (like mouse said, ALWAYS read the fine print!), and you can write a check to yourself and it would be treated like a regular purchase with a grace period. You can then use the new account to pay off the balance with a balance transfer.

fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?start=40&catid=52&threadid=632935

Date Posted: Jul/14/2006 3:57 PM
Quote:
On another side note, Citibank is fine being a BT target. I have a Diamond Preferred Am.ex with them that has a 0%, no fee offer. Whenever I want to take a BT from somewhere else that won’t send me a check, I just request a BT from Citibank and then have the other card pay off the balance. I’ve overpaid and had credit balances in the past, and they’ve never given me any trouble. So for getting cash from a BT, that’s a safe bet. It takes a week or maybe two, but how much faster are you going to get the money another way?

Date Posted: Aug/02/2006 9:45 AM
Quote:
Let’s say I get a $20,000 credit limit from Emigrant Direct and do a BT of $10,000 to a Citi account without a balance. Can I get Citi to send me a check for my “credit balance” after the BT goes through?

You can do it online. Manage my account > maintenance requests > credit balance refund.

So it sounds like Citi might be a good exit/conduit for getting money from other cards to the bank. I think a possible limitation might be the CL and I wonder if something would happen if I did that too many times. I also heard from another person that Citi will sometimes send 0% APR checks. Both of these are good pluses for using Citi in my strategy.

So if I use Citi as my conduit, then I need cards to feed it. Preferably one with no 0% BT’s with no fees that won’t red flag this activity. If there is a way to make this whole process free, I want to find it. Does anyone have suggestions for good cards for this part? Discover and Chase seems to be mentioned. I already have a Chase Sony card, so I don’t know if that will decrease the chance of getting another one.

Based on the App-o-rama posts, it seems best to submit the applications at the same time. I am not doing anything like an AOR, but maybe it would help anyway. So I want to create a plan of which cards I want and how will I do it….then execute it.

Something I found about credit history and use of limits. I found this post: fatwallet.com/t/52/641866/

Quote:
50% utilization for a single card isn’t good
90% utilization for a single card is not good
50% utilization over all cards is bad
90% utilization over all cards is worse

If you can keep the utilization to less than 50% each card, your score will be much less impacted. If you haven’t applied for any credit cards recently, now might be a good time to do an AOR to get some new credit lines and thus lower your utilization.

Does anyone have any advice to add or tips?

Guest: mouse
SENIOR MEMBER (Member for 2 yrs.+)
Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 8:20 pm

50% utilization for a single card isn’t good
90% utilization for a single card is not good
50% utilization over all cards is bad
90% utilization over all cards is worse

FOR 0.00% BT 99% BT IS FINE WITH ME!!!

FICO SCORES DON’T PAY MY BILLS!!!

But I do have a few $100,000’s un-used at all times

So it is real hard to be over 10% “OVER-ALL”

Guest: multiplierx
Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 11:46 am

I haven’t gotten much in the way of BT offers lately.

WAMU - 1.9%+ fee
CITI - 6.9% 6 months no fee(have a 0% expiring this month)
MBNA, BOA 3.9% + fee
Amex 3.9%+fee

I would like 0% but don’t really want another card.
_________________
Total interest paid on cards = 0.00
Amount of cash/rewards in past year = $550
Utilization - less than 1%

Guest: Snuffy
Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2006 12:03 pm

Last night I signed up for a Citi PremierPass and was instantly approved for $7500 CL. I chose Citi because it looks like a good card to move the money to the bank.

My next target is the Discover Platinum card. From what I have read it says there is no BT fee if you do it with the application. So I plan on waiting until I activate my Citi card and then BT to that during the Discover application.

Has anyone else tried this?