Balance Transfer Advice Needed!

[Anonymous]

So I am wondering if this makes sense in a money-saving sense, and also credit score wise. First where I am at:

3130/3100 Citi (0% for 1 more month)

3500/10000 BOA

3003/7000 Chase Freedom (17.24%)

0/1000 Chase Slate

2400/2500 LOC 9.9%

4600/7600 Kay (27%)

I got a offer to either do a balance transfer until May 2018 for 0% with a 3% fee, or 1.99% til Aug 2018 with a 3% fee from BOA today when I logged in. I was thinking of transferring over Chase Freedom, since it has a pretty significant APR, and the Kay bill has a 245 payment, so that will get piad down pretty rapidly, and Chase Freedom debt is like 6 years old.

Is it ok that the util of BOA will now be like 66/67%? How would this affect my fico? Also, I do have a 1000 bonus coming from work and plan to put that towards Citi to get it below maxed, plus the interest on that i think will be 14% soon, so lower than Chase Freedom.

What do you guys think?

[ylekiot1]

Lowering the rate is a good idea regardless but I can't tell how much you have available to address the high Kay item and the other items for paydown every month.  That would change my approach after the transfer depending on your answer.   Your BOA utilization at 66% wont be nearly as impactful to your score as the many others over 85% where some creditors start to consider the account maxed.

FWIW - For me when I was in this situation, I first, like you, looked at lowering the rates where I can with a transfer, and then service all accounts to get them below 90% utiliation as a second step (90% and above is where all creditors consider you maxed.  I would then focus to get everything down to below 85% across the board as the third step (where some creditors start to consider you maxed).  That to me seems to be the utilization cutoff for the best score improvement with minimal cash and sets you up for potentially another opportunity for another transfer with the score imporvement on your other credit lines, ideally chase Freedom would be where I would push for this for the other high interest items.  I then switch to the common approach of focusing the extra cash on the high interest and pay down them first while waiting for the next rate lowering opportunity that pops up from the score improvement steps above.

Good luck.