FICO and moving credit around

[Anonymous]

I have 2 cards, one with 10K limit and the other with a 15 K limit, first has 8K balance and the other 6.5 K balance. If i move the 8K to the card with the 15 K limit ( because it has a 0% promotional interest rate ), will it effect my FICO score? The overall debt and credit ratio will be the same. Thanks

[Anonymous]

it makes $ sense, but fico looks at individual account and overall utilization. a maxed (90% or higher uti) account is scored as harsh as a recent collection.

[Anonymous]

FICO takes Individual UTL into account in scoring-

 8 + 6.5 =   14.5 = 97% utl-

This will negativly affect you score-

Ask for a CLI -tell them you want to BT 8K and don't want to max out the card-

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Metergage wrote:

I have 2 cards, one with 10K limit and the other with a 15 K limit, first has 8K balance and the other 6.5 K balance. If i move the 8K to the card with the 15 K limit ( because it has a 0% promotional interest rate ), will it effect my FICO score? The overall debt and credit ratio will be the same. Thanks

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[Anonymous]

Ok, is there some rule to follow to make both $ and fico sense? for e.g only move 6 K to the promotional credit card? that would make it 12 K/15 K on the 2nd card. i.e 80%

[Anonymous]

$ sense is easy- lower apr means more to principle-

FICO sense- avoid going over 50% UTL - and never over 85%.

[Anonymous]

I recently got a CLI to do the transfer, so I probably won't be eligible for another for some time. So within my parameters, I want to do the transfer to make the best $ and FICO sense.

[marty56]

Along with what Timothy said, I would also not do this since a CCC may look at the card being maxed out and due something bad with your CL and possibly your interest rate on the other balance.

Also you will pay more interest on the 6.5 k balance (unless it is at 0%) since most CCCs allocate your payment to the charge with lowest interest rate.

[Anonymous]

It is at 0%. So I want to know how much I can transfer w/o adversely effecting my fico, but at the same time saving me interest, and transfer accordingly. Based on Tomothy's advice, it appears maybe transferring 5 to 6K is ok, not great, since will be more than 50%, but will be less than 85%, and will save me interest.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

It is at 0%. So I want to know how much I can transfer w/o adversely effecting my fico, but at the same time saving me interest, and transfer accordingly. Based on Tomothy's advice, it appears maybe transferring 5 to 6K is ok, not great, since will be more than 50%, but will be less than 85%, and will save me interest.

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Don't forget that there is probably a balance transfer fee, even when (or especially when) there's a 0% rate. Fees are that bad if they're capped, but most BofA cards, for instance, have no cap, so that fee goes up and up and up.

I just put $8K on a new $10K BofA card, and it cost me $240. If I drag this out as long as possible, it makes sense. For instance, if I took a whole year to pay it off, it would be the equivalent of 3% APR (really it would be lower, but I'm trying to keep it simple.) If I paid it off in 6 months, it would suddenly be like a 6% APR. And for three months, it would be 12%, which would be awful.

So that's why I'm dragging mine out for the full 15 months available! I may move some more over at the 6-month mark, leaving 9 months to pay it off, which would be the equivalent of 4.5%, which isn't bad either.

[Anonymous]

I wanted to check that any FICO score damage that may occur because of greater than 85% utilization is temporary only. In which case, I would like to transfer a maximum amount possible to save on interest and then pay down my balance in the upcoming months to bring util to less than 85%. is that ok? Does this mean the only offside will be that I will take a short term hit in FICO score? How many points of a hit would it approximately be? Thanks.