With all these higher interest rate opportunities like T-Bills ans SavingsBonds, I’ve been itching to apply for another of my favorite 0% balance transfer offers after recently paying off one of my current ones, but I’ve decided to wait at least another couple weeks. My reason? I figured since I just went from over 50% utilization of one credit card to zero, my credit score will jump up once all the credit bureaus hear about it. (Also supported by the FICO Score Estimator.) But since they only seem to get information once a month, they may not know about my good deeds yet. And I want the fattest credit limit I can get so I can maximize my earn interest off of borrowed free money.
So for now, I’ll have to be patient, and maybe find some more tasty credit offers.
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I’m thinking about starting up the credit card game myself. First timer here… I’ve gotten 5 offers in the last week. My credit score is an 820. I’ve got two offers for 0% on cash advances until January 2007, but they both want the typical 3% transaction fee. If I take a cash advance of $15000, they’ll charge me $450. That’s gonna eat in to my interest too much. I plan on putting the money in an ING Direct savings account which currently is pulling 3.5%. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Why pay a transaction fee if you don’t have to? Check out the offers in this post. None of them have balance transfer fees.
Thanks Jonathan, I’ve read that post and it was a wealth of information. I don’t have an outstanding balance which I need to pay off and I guess I’m just weary that if I transfer money to a card where I have no balance I’ll get stuck and the credit card company won’t send me a check for the “overpayment”. I know CitiBank is supposed to be good about this and you can even request the check online. I guess I’m just nervous about it…
Actually, with Citi you can ask for a straight check from them during the application process. No need for a credit balance! I did this with Chase as well, but I can’t find any no-balance-transfer fee Chase cards right now.
Since Bank of America wouldn’t send a convenience check, I did the electronic balance transfer from them to my Citibank card. Once the transfer appeared on my Citibank card, I requested it be sent to me by check. The entire process took about one week and was painless.
I wonder how many times I can do this before Citibank puts a stop to it???
Neo
I may have done something really crazy. Just a month ago, I applied for nine credit cards at once and I was approved for eight of them. I wasn’t expecting to be approved for so many of these at once. I ended up closing the American Express card since it had balance transfer fee and would be charging interest on that fee. So now, I have seven cards with avaiable credit up to $70,000. I currently have this money sitting at EmigrantDirect earning 4% return. It may stay there unless I find somewhere else to make an even higher return. I am not planning to make any large purchases soon, so I am not as concerned about my credit score.
Neo
Wow! 70k! Me being bad with APR number crunching, what would that be after 11 months? I know that you could get 70 28day T-bills. Essentially each one would give you $3 totalling $210 every 28 days. Keep reinvesting it for 11 months that way will gie you $2310. And I understandd correctly they would be exempt from state and local tax unlike the ED account correct?
Jonathan, I really like the blog and you have some great information out there. I’d been thinking about doing the 0% ‘free money’ game for quite some time and finally jumped in last month. I would have to say comment to this post, with regards to waiting to waiting a full month between paying off one card and applying/opening another. If you say that most of the 0% offers are for 12 months, the additional credit limit that you will achieve from this temporary bump in your credit score must be 1/11th greater than you would have otherwise gotten (due to lost interest), otherwise it won’t be worth your while. So, if you average $6000 per request now, your new credit line will have to be ~$550 greater to make up for the lost interest otherwise earned.