So here is what happened:
All sorts of shady companies start mailing and calling you to offer you variations of consolidation loans to pay off your credit card debt. Several of which I reported to the CFPB.
I wasn't previously aware of this industry and I already knew to avoid consolidation loans. Some of the interest rates were really attractive, but they either required closing out your credit card or were all lies. For kicks, I entertained a couple of the phone calls just to see what they really offered and reiterated many many times not to do a hard inquiry on my credit, this was successful. The ones I reported were the obvious bait and switch ones, such as companies that pretended to offer attractive loans but after their "review" would only do this for people with credit scores above 700 but here's this consolidation loan we can do. They wouldn't have called if you had a score of 700, do you even loan bro?
As far as actual credit cards go, there were a couple of winners and a couple of losers here. The winners made good on their credit line and offered the most flexibility while at the max limit. The losers did credit limit decreases and unexpected and shady things. Credit limit decreases are very debilitating because they make your utilization quickly go up further and turn a credit endeavor into a nightmare, as this cascades into other lenders thinking your spending is actually going up, but it stayed the same.
Winner:
CITIBANK - $60,000 Thank You Premier. Citibank had granted me a $60,000 credit limit on Thank You, for years. Although note, this is something I had requested from my various credit card reindeer games several years ago. Citibank allowed going over this limit, never decreased it, never closed it or anything. Note: I am also a Citigold member and this may have had an affect. Citigold requires a minimum checking balance of $50,000. But remember I balanced transferred all the cash to populate bank accounts, so bankers think I'm balling and worthy, but am I?
Loser:
CITIBANK - lol. I also have a Custom Credit Line with Citibank. This was decreased from $12000 to $2000 to $500. This was largely unused as well, but thought I would let you know.
Alliant Credit Union - credit Limit decrease any time I paid off their card a bit. The justification letters that came in the mail contained credit information that was 4 months old. So I stopped doing that until I paid everything off at once.
American Express - $30,000. This card wasn't utilized and had a little bit of spending on it, less than 1%. They closed the card very quickly as my utilization was reported.
BIGGEST LOSER:
Bank of America - $45,000 BofA Visa Rewards. These guys yanked my credit card with the full balance on it! This caused my 65% utilization to skyrocket at the time. No chill. This also caused reporting problems on my credit reports, because services couldn't tell if the card was open or closed yet I was still making payments on it. Some utilization metrics included that balance and some didn't. So therefore, one thing might say ~70% utilization and another might say ~110%. Talking with some of the shady consolidation loan representatives, they said Bank of America does that a lot and its part of a game they play.
After being aware that this was a possibility, I was pretty alarmed throughout this process. But no other lender did this, so therefore props go to:
Citibank
Chase
Wells Fargo
Alliant
Discover
Capital One
I missed out on some cool rewards points promos, but fortunately I never needed to apply for a mortgage, rent a new apartment (with my name on the lease, anyway), or do whatever else needed credit. Although I did get a bad deal on a car, but I told my employer to pay me more to drive there because I had competing offers in walking distance. I floated the balance for a few months before I changed jobs anyway. They paid a lot more than others and had a 401k, so since there were no compromises except a commute I just stacked it up. Looking for those inquiries to fall off in a month or two.
There are some other interesting things and details, so stay tuned for the ebook!
