Have too many cards but want another?

[K-in-Boston]

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@K-in-Boston wrote:
The 0% usually has a 3% up-front fee. It you think you won't pay it off in a year, you can always choose 4.99% or similar with no fee. Discover, Bank of America and PenFed all love BTs. Definitely ask for CLIs on both Discover cards first and I would advise maxing out the Discover when doing a BT but hitting 75% may make sense to you to save money rather than worry about 10 points of credit score temporarily. Just don't go above 90% and keep in mind the fee or any interest that would add to that.

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On my phone and I actually read your question wrong.  No, it does not make the card company that you are moving the balance from (I answered as if you had asked to) angry at all.  AmEx is happiest when they are paid in full, whether that is a revolver like yours or a charge card, and they don't care what method is used to pay them.  If you're ever concerned about that last part, Discover will also gladly deposit the money into your checking account so that you can pay your other lenders the way you normally do.

[HeavenOhio]

Some other things to keep in mind about balance transfers…

1. If you transfer a balance to a card with a lower limit than the donor card, your score could dip due to the higher utilization on the second card.
2. If the card offers 0% for balance transfers but doesn't also offer 0% for purchases, don't buy anything with the card until the BT is paid off.
3. It's possible that the transfered balance could appear on both cards for brief period. This could make its way to your credit report and cause a temporary score dip.

[SunriseEarth]

I'd have to agree with what others have suggested.   See if your Discover has any good BT offers and use if they'd help you.   However, since your Discover only has a $7600 CL, ask for a CLI before using it for BT.   Putting a $6K balance on a $7600 card would cause a significant score dip.    If you don't get a decent increase, you could consider doing a BT of your Citi balance, especially since that has a higher APR.  Of course, since you've said you intend to have all balances paid off by June, a BT might not make much sense in your situation, since the BT fee is paid up front.  

And no, don't feel bad if you don't use all cards all the time.  Having some CCs at zero balance is good for your UTIL.  

As for BCP, the AF only makes sense if you're spending more than $3700 a year at stores that truly code as "grocery" for AMEX.   If that isn't the case, downgrade.  

[newhis]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I've worked very hard on my husband's and my own credit in the last several years. My only issue was not having credit. I started with a citi forward card 4 years ago. My husband had medical collections from a surgery without insurance, so I managed to make deals with the collection agencies to pay and get them all taken off, all but one which we paid but didn't fall off until a few months ago. After I cleaned up his credit he was able to get approved for his first card 1 year and 11 months ago. I pretty much applied for whatever he could get to start building credit, not thinking about how they would be redundant and how we would use them.
My cards:
Citi forward card, March 13', $9500 limit, $1700 util (17% apr)
Amex bcp, May 2015, $30k limit, $6k util (13% apr)
Discover it, July 2015, $7.6k limit, 0 util (17% apr)

His cards:
Chase freedom, April 2015, 3k limit, 0 util (24% apr)
Discover it, July 2015, 8.6k limit, 0 util (17% apr)
He "accidentally" opened a Home Depot card for 2 days
AU on all mine

No derogs on either report
His FICO per discover it is 775
Mine is 755 per Amex, 767 per discover, 776 per citi

He has 1 or 2 inquiries on each bureau, I have 5 from a car loan that will fall off in July. 90k income.

This was our families first exposure to credit cards, and we found ourselves in 21k debt soon after getting the cards in 2015 thanks to needing to move quickly and then moving into a fixer upper where several large purchases ended up on the cards. So we are paying them down and plan to have them paid off in June. We put the money on them when we first got them then didn't touch the cards until recently. I've been using them for points recently only for my daily spends where I PIF.

Now I feel so much pressure to use all of the cards because of them giving us credit but I'm finding that I regret some of them. Regretting having discover it, especially me and my husband both having accounts. Can't close his bc he only has 2 cards and this is his highest line of credit. Thinking about closing mine but not sure how it will affect me. Also thinking of pc the Amex bcp to bce because most of my grocery spend is at Walmart. Would like to pc the citi but don't think they will.

Now my issue is that I would like a CSP for the SUB and would like to use the chase cards for most of my spend for the UR. On my husband's freedom account he has the CSP in his offers with 16.xx% apr so I feel like he has a good shot of getting approved. I keep thinking about applying after his oldest account falls off in April because we are going on vacation in June and we eat out a lot. I would get the card and we would be able to make the 4K spend and PIF so I could get the UR points, but I'm just so conflicted about having all these cards. I don't know if I'm buying into the hype about the chase trio, which in my case would be the chase duo for daily spend. I don't know how to incorporate all of these cards into my spend so that they are being used when I really want to use one brand most of the time to maximize rewards. I realize that I am all over the place with concerns but do you have any advice about applying for the CSP or about closing down any cards? Thanks in advance.

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 1.- I love Discover:

- easy SP CLIs

- easy chat APR reductions 

- easy chat APR promos (0% in purchases for 12 months, even if the card is almost 3 years old)

- good BT offers

- Discover deals for extra cash back

- good gift cards with $25 value with only $20 cashback 

2.- AMEX BCP, easy to downgrade to BCE, you can do it by chatting with them.

3.- If Chase show you CSP offer with 16.xx% APR is more than 99% that you will get it

Do you have any open loan. You can get a few FICO points (up to 30) if you don't have an open loan and you follow the SSL technique (get a secured loan for $500/5 years, pay it down to $44 and keep it open for 5 years paying $2 every 3 months). 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Discover loves taking BT's.

You can do soft pull credit line increases on their site every few months.  I would do one before the BT, so you'll have lower utilization.

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Very solid advice. 

[Anonymous]

I ended up applying today so my vacation would count for the SUB spend since the 4K might be a little difficult to meet without it, and my husband got approved for 14.5 K for the CSP. If the 5/24 includes an account with him as an AU then I believe he may be at 5/24. I went through the CSP offers because it gave me a solid APR of 16.49%, although when approved it gave me 16.79%. Chase started giving me a "apply for CSP" at the top of the account page but the APR was not solid one so I didn't go through that to apply. He was also pre-qualified on the website. Overall I am happy with the SL and can't wait to start using the card.

[K-in-Boston]

Congrats on the great SL and thank you for following up with us.  Chase increased their rates by 0.25% due to the last Fed hike and it didn't seem to be be updated yet in the offers.  I just checked and my 15.49% Slate approval this week is actually 15.74%.  Going back and looking at the 15.49% Freedom Unlimited offer that is still in my account, I see the Prime Rate is from February:

Prime Rate: Variable APRs are based on the 3.75% Prime Rate as of 2/6/2017.

We add 11.74% to the Prime Rate to determine the Purchase/Balance Transfer APR. Maximum APR 29.99%.

[Anonymous]

I did a balance transfer with Discover. Discover allows you to balance transfer to your checking account and it does not code as cash advance. What is better is that I got the deposit in 2 days. I paid off all my cards and also didn't want them to know that I was balance transfering away their balances.