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@Anonymous wrote:Posted for one dollar. If I carry a balance on more than one card my score usually drops 10-15 points.
This effect will change over time. As file ages and bucket changes.
Obviously PIF is the way to go in most scenarios. However I do not see any problem with carrying "manageable" balances from time to time.
It's all about the price of money...if purchase X is worth paying interest for y months, go for it! The key is to decide what is manageable for YOU.
Right now I have about $5K on one card (0% interest until April 2016). Everything else I PIF.
On most of the cards that I use regularly, including CSP and SMMC, I let a significant balance post, then pay it off before the due date.
In the eyes of the CRAs, this is balance carrying; but I don't pay anything in interest.
In the past, and as of now, I'm carrying a good chunk of balance (over multiple periods) on my AMEX. It's got 0% APR for a couple of more months. The Freedom does too, but its limit is just too puny for carrying a balance.
Yeah, I carry balances. With the exception of the CSP and the PRG (which gets paid in full anyway for obvious reasons), they're all on 0% cards. Which has been a blessing because the vast majority of my card debt was accumulated from helping my family out of a really, really **bleep** situation that savings alone couldn't prevent.
2014 was an awful year that I honestly wish I could wipe from my memory...
But everything's OK now. Plus I've got a new higher-paying job, so those balances will be going down quickly. Three cards are actually going to be completely paid off next month.
I carry a balance on purpose every now and then. I would let $200-$300 float to the next billing cycle and then pif.
I've been doing it where I'll pay all but $10-20 on each card I use before the statement cuts, that way it reports some small amount, but internally I'm looking PIFish. I'm getting sick of Amex, though. Spent 15k through the 2 cards since Nov, and PIF. I never got my 3x CLI, denied twice. Gonna start running my monthly spend through some other cards. Sorry Amex.
I've got lots of balances. Much of it was on low interest rate offers, or relatively low interest accounts. A year ago I was paying in the range of $350 per month in interest cost on these. Then BofA, then Discover, then US Bank started sending 0% BT offers my way, and through strategic redeployment, my ongoing interest cost is more like $100 per month recently. And some of that is due to putting a BT on CapOne, and forcing myself to leave something on the AMEX to use a bit of the AMEX 7% Holiday Rate, to keep them busy.
I keep a clear distiction now between cards that are PIF and those that are working on these balance pay downs. I add some charges to a BT card only if it has some reward and the payment rate is going to wipe it off the account the next month.
The TU measure just reported $38,618 today as the All Bankcard balance. It will be dropping fast this year.
@Dw4250 wrote:Obviously PIF is the way to go in most scenarios. However I do not see any problem with carrying "manageable" balances from time to time.
It's all about the price of money...if purchase X is worth paying interest for y months, go for it! The key is to decide what is manageable for YOU.
Right now I have about $5K on one card (0% interest until April 2016). Everything else I PIF.
That's the way I've thought for a long time on this stuff, though I've been paying things off that I don't need to be dealing with and stuff and certainly the BTs I've done have helped a lot. Going to this site and others has really changed my perception of these issues and there's a lot of advice that unfortunately isn't stressed enough on sites targeted towards the average person.
@NRB525 wrote:I've got lots of balances. Much of it was on low interest rate offers, or relatively low interest accounts. A year ago I was paying in the range of $350 per month in interest cost on these. Then BofA, then Discover, then US Bank started sending 0% BT offers my way, and through strategic redeployment, my ongoing interest cost is more like $100 per month recently. And some of that is due to putting a BT on CapOne, and forcing myself to leave something on the AMEX to use a bit of the AMEX 7% Holiday Rate, to keep them busy.
I keep a clear distiction now between cards that are PIF and those that are working on these balance pay downs. I add some charges to a BT card only if it has some reward and the payment rate is going to wipe it off the account the next month.
The TU measure just reported $38,618 today as the All Bankcard balance. It will be dropping fast this year.
Your story is really inspiring I'm really in the process myself where I've really deciding more and more which cards of mine I need to PIF and which ones I can work on paying the balances on like what I did recently with transferring a balance on my CapOne card to my Discover. I'm just fortunate that my reports are at least clean, there's no baddies or anything like that and I'm not maxing out any of my cards at all and never have.
no interest paid in 2014. I allow 34 dollars to show on 1 statement, but paid before the due date