topic Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing? in Credit Card Applications

How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

boober — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 23:22:58 GMT

I'm thinking of applying for a couple of new cards here in about 3 weeks. I'm paying down all the balances on most of my cards except for 2. I threw huge chunks of money at some cards but the statements cut on some of em with a couple of new purchases on em so they aren't quite $0. The 2 cards I'm not really touching are cards that are BT's I did about 7 months ago and so they have 0 APR's on em for another year or so. One of em has about $7000/10000 on it, and the other is about $1700/2500. My other cards are basically like $500/56000.

I read that your overall UT should be low, seems as though under 10% or lower is ideal. And to have 0 balances on as many cards as possible. But what if you have say $100 on one card, maybe $50 on another etc.? And I'm referring to cards with limits in excess of $3000.00.

Is it as irrelevant as I'm thinking, or does it really matter?

I ask because I really don't want to wait another month or so to get my 3-4 cards with such low balances on em, down to $0.

Thanks.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

elim — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 23:23:36 GMT

What are your scores like with 70% Util on a card?

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

boober — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 23:28:59 GMT

Hello

Thanks for the reply. My scores are all around 760 with nothing negative other than a couple of 30 day lates on my mortgage from about 6 years ago or so.

Income is $85,000 and inqueries are around 5-9 in the last 2 years depending on the bureau. 3-4 of which were from mortgage refi shopping about 1.5 years ago.

I have a Discover More card which I love that I've had for about 5 years that has a $11,800 limit on it, and I'm appyling for the It card here in a few weeks as I'm hoping for another good BT card to use for my remaining cc debt. I hope I can get around 10k for a starting CLI with that.

I'm thinking of for the hell of it going for the Chase Freedom and maybe a US Bank card sine I don't have one of theirs.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

Gmood1 — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:35:37 GMT

Nearly everything looks good besides the high utilization. If you're looking for higher SL's . There are other companies that might be more giving on that area. BBVA Amex or NASA.

Do you have any Chase cards? US bank is known to be conservative ..though ymmv.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

Gmood1 — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:40:11 GMT

FWIW, I wouldn't worry about how many cards report a balance while apping. I'd be more concerned with the utilization of each card and overall utilization.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

boober — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:41:27 GMT

I do have a Chase Slate that I got about 3 years ago but they've been incredibly stingy to me. I think it's always been at $3500 since day one. I did do a BT on that when I got it for a couple of grand and paid it off within a year or so. Did another grand or 2 of purchases total on a regular basis. Never an auto CLI ior have I asked for one, and anytime I look online for a BT offer the last 1.5 years or so, they're never there for me

Discover's always been great to me in the 5 or so years I've had their More card. Started out at around 5k. They gave me an auto 3k or so and also I asked for a couple more CLI's to get me where I'm at now of $11,800. I've given them a ton of my business cuz they always have 0% APR BT's and they're always good to me. I think I should easily be able to get an It! card and if it had at least a 5k to 10k CL, I could just swap my balances around to get em paid off quicker.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

boober — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 00:45:40 GMT

Well I am at a 65k limit for all my cards, and I do have $7700 on a Barclays card that has a $10,000 limit.

And a B of A card with $1700 on it and a $2500 limit.

I just haven't paid those off because I wanted to pay down my other cards and those 2 cards have almost another year of 0% APR BT's on em.

My other cards are at like $400/53000.

Could those other 2 cards really hurt me from my goals right now? I was hoping if anything any potential suitors would just assume that I'd be getting their card so that I could do BT's onto the new cards.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

Gmood1 — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 01:05:43 GMT

You really don't want to get too carried away on the balance transfers. I'm no expert, you may very well be fine depending on what banks or CUs you decide to go for.

Chase was stingy with my slate as well. It was stuck at $1500 for 7 years! I rolled the limit into a Freedom and closed the card.

If you plan to app Chase. Try to grab to cards from them that may benefit you on the one HP.

NASA offers BTs with Apr set for the entire life of the loan.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

Gmood1 — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 01:09:46 GMT

If I'm not mistaken, the last set of checks NASA sent me. It was 3% with no transfer fee.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

NRB525 — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 03:58:47 GMT

@boober wrote:
Well I am at a 65k limit for all my cards, and I do have $7700 on a Barclays card that has a $10,000 limit.

And a B of A card with $1700 on it and a $2500 limit.

I just haven't paid those off because I wanted to pay down my other cards and those 2 cards have almost another year of 0% APR BT's on em.

My other cards are at like $400/53000.

Could those other 2 cards really hurt me from my goals right now? I was hoping if anything any potential suitors would just assume that I'd be getting their card so that I could do BT's onto the new cards.

That's a fair amount of credit, and you have good scores.

What is your full list of cards you have now?

Which cards are you considering apping, and what are your objectives with getting those cards?

Do all cards need to be apped in one go, or you can pace them out over a series of months to cover spend bonus requirements?

FWIW, I have gotten 11 new regular CC paced since early December 2014 through now. With open balances of $45k starting, and recently working down to $26k. All of those apps were with banks I already had some history with, including PenFed which came after a year with their secured card.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

SouthJamaica — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 04:19:20 GMT

@boober wrote:
I'm thinking of applying for a couple of new cards here in about 3 weeks. I'm paying down all the balances on most of my cards except for 2. I threw huge chunks of money at some cards but the statements cut on some of em with a couple of new purchases on em so they aren't quite $0. The 2 cards I'm not really touching are cards that are BT's I did about 7 months ago and so they have 0 APR's on em for another year or so. One of em has about $7000/10000 on it, and the other is about $1700/2500. My other cards are basically like $500/56000.

I read that your overall UT should be low, seems as though under 10% or lower is ideal. And to have 0 balances on as many cards as possible. But what if you have say $100 on one card, maybe $50 on another etc.? And I'm referring to cards with limits in excess of $3000.00.

Is it as irrelevant as I'm thinking, or does it really matter?

I ask because I really don't want to wait another month or so to get my 3-4 cards with such low balances on em, down to $0.

Thanks.

You have to make a decision whether it's more important to save money, or more important to get your score down for the applications.

Your 70% utilization on those cards is going to hurt you.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

boober — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 05:04:16 GMT

I'm just hoping to get another card for BT's.

My current cards from Chase, Cap1, FNB, Amex, B of A, and a couple of others, none of em ever offer BT's. EVER. Never have.

My Discover More card is the only that offers them to me all the time. I just want to pay down the rest of this CC debt and I could easily do that if I had another card like my Discover More card that's always offering BT's with 0%APR.

Discover It! Seems to do the same and they've been great to me all these years, unlike every single one of the other cards I own.

I could just continute to pay off my CC debt over time with out another card, but it'd obviously cost me more money due to interest.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

NRB525 — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 04:37:14 GMT

@boober wrote:
I'm just hoping to get another card for BT's.

My current cards from Chase, Cap1, FNB, Amex, B of A, and a couple of others, none of em ever offer BT's. EVER. Never have.

My Discover More card is the only that offers them to me all the time. I just want to pay down the rest of this CC debt and I could easily do that if I had another card like my Discover More card that's always offering BT's with 0%APR.

Discover It! Seems to do the same and they've been great to me all these years, unlike every single one of the other cards I own.

I could just continute to pay off my CC debt over time with out another card, but it'd obviously cost me more money due to interest.

Really? No BT offers from BofA? I get mailers every month for my two old basic BA cards, and started getting mailers from the AK Air card recently.

Maybe call them and ask if there are any BT offers for you?

I will say they were not sending the offers while they were Balance Chasing / CLD both accounts, but since early 2014 it's like clockwork.

If you have a substantial balance on the BofA card, do a no-BT Fee transfer to Cap One then after that settles in, BT back to BofA.

Re: How close to a 0 balance should your cards be before app'ing?

boober — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 05:40:34 GMT

Hello NRB525.

That's excellent advice and I appreciate it. The B of A card I have though only has a $2500 limit on it. If I had another card with at least a 5k limit on it I could just shuffle the debt to and fro each card as time goes on.

In the interm for the hell of it, I went to my amazon account and thanks to some great advice I had read from others, I tried asking for a CLI via the online chat, and I was able to get an increase from $2800 to $6000!

And I got it just in time before they report it to the bureas in the next day or so.