topic Re: Probability of a Balance Chase? in Credit Cards

Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sat, 25 May 2019 03:29:24 GMT

I have a Barclay CC with $2,800 balance on it. I can pay $2000 on it right away. Will they balance chase me down to an $800 CL?

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Sat, 25 May 2019 03:34:34 GMT

Well, that really depends. How long have you been carrying a balance? Are you paying more than the minimum? How's the rest of your utilization on other cards? Minimum payments on those? Any over limits on any of your cards? Have they soft pulled you for the month? A lot goes into it.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sat, 25 May 2019 04:53:05 GMT

I was balance chased once before on it from a 5K CL down to 3.8K. I’ve paid it down to 2800 by making higher than min. payments for 6 months. Now, I can pay a large chunk but I don’t want them to balance chase again. No over-limit on other cards but high utilization all around. Have not been using most of my cards and paying down using snowball method.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Revelate — Sat, 25 May 2019 04:51:55 GMT

Given that paying off debt that is sitting on the APR’s most rewards cards have, why worry about about being balanced chased anyway?

Finances > FICO.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Anonymous — Sat, 25 May 2019 06:02:59 GMT

@pi-r-squared wrote:
I was balance chased once before on it from a 5K CL down to 3.8K. I’ve paid it down to 2800 by making higher than min. payments for 6 months. Now, I can pay a large chunk but I don’t want them to balance chase again. No over-limit on other cards but high utilization all around. Have not been using most of my cards and paying down using snowball method.

If I had to guess, the balance chasing will continue until your UTI comes down not only on their card but on others. I personally feel it is ok to temporarily have a UTI on the higher side but it sounds like this has been going on for longer than Barclays is comfortable with. Some creditors don't seem to mind high UTI for extended periods but Sir Barclay isn't one of them. Are you being chased on any others?

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Sat, 25 May 2019 06:09:03 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@pi-r-squared wrote:
I was balance chased once before on it from a 5K CL down to 3.8K. I’ve paid it down to 2800 by making higher than min. payments for 6 months. Now, I can pay a large chunk but I don’t want them to balance chase again. No over-limit on other cards but high utilization all around. Have not been using most of my cards and paying down using snowball method.
If I had to guess, the balance chasing will continue until your UTI comes down not only on their card but on others. I personally feel it is ok to temporarily have a UTI on the higher side but it sounds like this has been going on for longer than Barclays is comfortable with. Some creditors don't seem to mind high UTI for extended periods but Sir Barclay isn't one of them. Are you being chased on any others?

Agreed. It might be best to pay them all down together to show that if you get in a tight spot, you won't run it up again, that you have other options. If you pay them down alone, they may slash your limit to keep you from using it again.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

SBR249 — Sat, 25 May 2019 06:37:49 GMT

If they are going to balance chase you then there's really nothing you can do. Keeping a high util balance on it just to keep a CL is probably just as worse as have lower available credit plus you'll be paying interest. Lenders gotta do what lenders got to do. Best thing to do as mentioned before is to focus on trying to tackle your utils across your portfolio as much and as fast as you can. Pick a method like the snowball or just go after the balances starting with the highest APR (while paying your other minimums of course) and keep at it. Not only will you be saving on the interest charges, but you may mitigate some of the AA like balance chasing as your CR improves. Good luck!

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sat, 25 May 2019 12:48:40 GMT

No other cards have been balance chased. I’ve got around 90% util on all my cards except for the Barclays. It’s at 73% (2800/3800) and will drop to 21% with a 2K payment. The snowball method will allow me to pay this off and continue with my other cards.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sat, 25 May 2019 13:03:00 GMT

My Barclay CC has the highest APR with the lowest balance. I want to rid myself of that debt so I can tackle my next card (2nd highest APR). I’ve been making decent progress on my debt. Made a spreadsheet to calculate future interest and payments. Still can’t get the interest exactly right but it’s close! Seeing how I can finish off the Barclay and throw those payments toward 2 other cards. Unfortunately, I have yet another card (Discover) that has $1700 left and I use it to survive. I really have $1450 available to use as I get charged $250 interest per month for the balance I’m carrying there. So once I pay off 3 cards (it’ll take close to 48 months), then I can pay on Discover. But at least I have a plan!

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Anonymous — Sat, 25 May 2019 13:07:52 GMT

You’re definitely in a risky position. In this case I’d pay all of them down under 87%, and with what you have left, assess your balances and see if you can get one or more down to 67% (the breakpoint for the threshold is 88.9/68.9%, but going to 87/67% should keep the balances under the thresholds when interest is added).

Common pay down plans I’ve seen from learned members here are to get all cards under 87%, then all under 67%, all under 47%, all under 27%, and them pay them off as you can most efficiently.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Anonymous — Sat, 25 May 2019 13:24:39 GMT

@pi-r-squared wrote:
. I really have $1450 available to use as I get charged $250 interest per month for the balance I’m carrying there. So once I pay off 3 cards (it’ll take close to 48 months), then I can pay on Discover. But at least I have a plan!

$250 a month on Discover? What is the balance and APR?

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sat, 25 May 2019 14:33:48 GMT

My Discover has a CL of $19K. I can only pay down to $17.3K, run it up close to max, then pay it down to $17.3K. Maybe over time , I can increase payments by $50 or $100 every month but I’m throwing any extra monies toward Barclay.

APR is 16.24%.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Revelate — Sat, 25 May 2019 15:19:20 GMT

Look at it this way: even just on the Discover alone you are losing 3000 dollars a year.

That amount is relevant even to me, nearly two mortgage payments on my LA condo, and it would be nearly 3 if I weren’t on a 15 year mortgage.

You don’t need to worry about being balance chased, that is honestly irrelevant: take a hard look at your finances (budget) and just start paying everything off.

Credit limit or even open cards doesn’t matter, stopping the financial bleeding does.

If it were me I would make minimum payments everywhere, sort all my revolving debt by highest APR, and attack that one first by throwing all available free cashflow at it, then the next highest, and so on and so forth.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sun, 26 May 2019 00:35:25 GMT

Yep! That’s what I’m doing. Discover is the only CC I’m using. Paying back what I charge every month. All my other cards I’ve ranked by balance and APR. Barclay is the highest APR with lowest balance. It should be paid off in 4 months. After that, I’ll be rolling payments to the other cards. I have a long way to undue the damage.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Anonymous — Sun, 26 May 2019 01:25:59 GMT

It sounds like you've got a lot more going on than worrying about being balance chased by one lender. There's not much you can do to prevent it, really. If they've done it before then odds are they'll do it again based on your overal UTI. TBH, I'd pay down more on Discover first. Or whatever you highest balance is. The interest on that alone would likely pay down smaller cards rather quickly.

I know it feels great to finally pay off a CC, but in the long term those higher balances are going to make it a wash.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sun, 26 May 2019 01:49:16 GMT

I realize I have a LONG WAY to go in paying down these cards... but I’m thankful that I have enough income to correct my mistakes.... I have so much debt that it got me frustrated and angry at myself but I figured out a plan, built a spreadsheet, and figured out I can pay off Barclay in 2-4 months, then my next one in 16 months (while paying min on the 3rd), then another 22 months to get the largest balance finished. If everything goes right 40+ months from now, then I can tackle Discover. Took me about 3 years to get in this mess and probably 6+ to get out,

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

SBR249 — Sun, 26 May 2019 02:17:26 GMT

I feel like if it's going to be a 6+ year endeavor, you may need to modify you plan a bit. Instead of taking 16 months for the second card and 22 for the next, consider alternating them by paying one down to something like 60-70% and then the next down to 60-70%, and then back to the first one down to 40-50% and then the same for the second. That way you can concurrently lower your utils (assuming you aren't being balance chased on any of them) without leaving some cards with high utils for a long time while you focus on just one. At some point, I'd say maybe around 30-40%, you can see if you can get a debt consolidation loan to get everything under one payment and interest rate.

The way you are currently planning, you'll have basically at least one card with high util level until almost the very end which can really hurt your chances of getting a consolidation loan as well as increase the chances you'll be hit with adverse action long before then.

Long story short, snowball is fine, but the prospect of leaving multiple cards close to maxed out for years on minimum payments is risky and concerning. Might be better to keep things overall on par with each other in a phase-wise fashion.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

Revelate — Sun, 26 May 2019 03:46:35 GMT

@Anonymous actually highest APR always generates the most interest for the amount of that debt.

Basically 10 bucks at 100% generates an additional 10 bucks of interest a year.

The same ten dollars as part of a total of 100000 dollars in debt now at 10% only generates 1 dollar in interest a year.

If the goal is to pay off debt the fastest always put cash to the highest APR as dollar per dollar that is the biggest interest generating debt.

The fact more interest is accruing on the larger debt is irrelevant, it’s still cheaper money.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

KJinNC — Sun, 26 May 2019 04:30:30 GMT

JMO (and my highest limit on a credit card is $500, so I'm coming at this from a pretty different perspective), getting out of credit card debt is a lot more important than whether or not you get balance-chased or even had a card closed on you. I would put all I can spare on it one card at a time, highest APR first, until they are all zero or close to zero. You can worry about limits later.

Re: Probability of a Balance Chase?

pi-r-squared — Sun, 26 May 2019 12:25:18 GMT

It sounds like any which way I tackle it, this debt will take quite some time! But I’m focused on this task and trying to undo this damage. It’s just very tempting to just pay down this Barclay CC because it has the lowest balance AND the highest APR. As Dave Ramsay would say, paying it completely off will make me feel I’ve accomplished something. Now, with my other 2 cards that I’m not using, the next one I want to work on will again have the lower balance and higher APR. I guess I could fire my guns at this one until 70% util, then aim at the other one until 70%, then 60/60, 50/50, etc..... I’m gonna rework my spreadsheet to see what it’ll look like.