topic Re: Balance Transfer Options in Credit Cards

Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 19:14:55 GMT

Hi all,

Just looking for some balance transfer pointers and opinions. I've got about $2100 currently with discover and about $2500 with citi to transfer. My Fico 8 scores are pretty consistent across the three bureaus, at around 700. Income 50k. Ex has 5 inqs, TU has 5 inqs, and Eq has 6 inqs. I've obtained 4 new accounts within 2019, and refinanced my vehicle in June 2019. I do have a medical collection from 2015 that has been paid, however it still shows on my reports in a closed status. They wouldn't remove it altogether. I'd like to transfer the balances to avoid paying interest, however, my credit health is more important to me. What I mean by that is, I plan to get an apartment and a new vehicle within the next year, so if i need to leave my profile where its at and not open any new accounts so that i have the best possible outcome for my home and car, then I will pay the interest and stay put. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance

Re: Balance Transfer Options

SouthJamaica — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 19:50:50 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi all,
Just looking for some balance transfer pointers and opinions. I've got about $2100 currently with discover and about $2500 with citi to transfer. My Fico 8 scores are pretty consistent across the three bureaus, at around 700. Income 50k. Ex has 5 inqs, TU has 5 inqs, and Eq has 6 inqs. I've obtained 4 new accounts within 2019, and refinanced my vehicle in June 2019. I do have a medical collection from 2015 that has been paid, however it still shows on my reports in a closed status. They wouldn't remove it altogether. I'd like to transfer the balances to avoid paying interest, however, my credit health is more important to me. What I mean by that is, I plan to get an apartment and a new vehicle within the next year, so if i need to leave my profile where its at and not open any new accounts so that i have the best possible outcome for my home and car, then I will pay the interest and stay put. Any advice would be helpful. Thanks in advance

I don't really understand your question. If you want to transfer your 2 balances to 1 or more other accounts, and don't want to open any new accounts (rightly in my opinion), and don't want to lower your scores (also rightly in my opinion), then your only recourse would be to transfer the balances to your other existing accounts in amounts that would not exceed 28% of the limits on those accounts, but you don't tell us what you have. So tell us what your accounts are, what your limits are, what your balances are, what your interest rates are, and what balance transfer offers there are.

If your question is whether you should even do a balance transfer, or should instead "pay the interest and stay put".... my advice is to pay the interest (and the principal) and stay put. Just pay them down as best you can. That and time will improve your scores.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

K-in-Boston — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 20:02:58 GMT

It would be helpful if you list your current credit cards (and their limits) and what the APRs are on the ones with balances. If you are unable to pay off the balances quickly and those are not currently at promotional APRs, they would accrue a substantial amount of interest. Are you eligible to join Navy FCU? Depending on your current APRs, you could potentially pay up to an additional $1,000 off of those balances over the next year with the same payments.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

AverageJoesCredit — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 21:31:41 GMT

If you open 1 new bt card now, you will be fine in a year imo. All you need to do is push your target date back a month. A new card would be worth moving your balances to and one new account shouldnt destroy your profile. Of course i third the comment you should share what cards you currently have.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

tcbofade — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 21:40:07 GMT

With 700 scores, you might check Discover and Citi for prequals.

Yes, you read that correctly.

In theory, you could pay off your existing Citi balance with a new Discover account, and pay off your existing Discover balance with a new Citi account...

Not that I, personally, have ever done such a thing...

Unless you plan to apply for a mortgage in the next 12 months, I don't see a reason not to.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 23:10:06 GMT

So I have quite a few cards:
Amex ED- 0/1000
Amex gold- 0 bal
Amex cash mag-1200/2000 (0% until 8/2020)
Amex BCP- daily card, spend about 1200-1500 per month and PIF. 6k limit
Discover IT- 2100/9000 (0% until 10/4/19)
Discover #2- 0/7600
Ulta-0/5250
VS-0/5000
Cap one- 49.99/1350
Care credit-800/15k
Citi-2500/4000 (0% until 9/2020)
Tempurpedic-2500/5700

I only want to pay off Citi because I made a mistake and purchased a drink during my BT, forgetting I would be billed interest, thus making the 0% interest worthless. I’m in my early 20s so my oldest card is from 2014. I guess my concern was more or less if applying for a new card would be more beneficial or harmful for my situation. Pretty much all of the cards besides my care credit promos and the others listed, are/will be 20 something % when they expire. The only BT I have right now is 10.99% for 12 months for Citi, nothing from my other lenders

Re: Balance Transfer Options

CreditInspired — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 23:17:53 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
So I have quite a few cards:
Amex ED- 0/1000
Amex gold- 0 bal
Amex cash mag-1200/2000 (0% until 8/2020)
Amex BCP- daily card, spend about 1200-1500 per month and PIF. 6k limit
Discover IT- 2100/9000 (0% until 10/4/19)
Discover #2- 0/7600
Ulta-0/5250
VS-0/5000
Cap one- 49.99/1350
Care credit-800/15k
Citi-2500/4000 (0% until 9/2020)
Tempurpedic-2500/5700

I only want to pay off Citi because I made a mistake and purchased a drink during my BT, forgetting I would be billed interest, thus making the 0% interest worthless. I’m in my early 20s so my oldest card is from 2014. I guess my concern was more or less if applying for a new card would be more beneficial or harmful for my situation. Pretty much all of the cards besides my care credit promos and the others listed, are/will be 20 something % when they expire. The only BT I have right now is 10.99% for 12 months for Citi, nothing from my other lenders

I don't think this is true. If the drink cost $15 and your minimum payment is $120, just pay ~$150 and you're good to go. I'm almost certain I'm correct but I'll wait for one of the experts to come along and let us know.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

NRB525 — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 23:29:10 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
So I have quite a few cards:
Discover IT- 2100/9000 (0% until 10/4/19)
Discover #2- 0/7600

I only want to pay off Citi because I made a mistake and purchased a drink during my BT, forgetting I would be billed interest, thus making the 0% interest worthless.

No, no, no.

The use of the Citi card is not a terminal mistake. Your payments will be applied first to the lowest APR up to the minimum payment amount. The minimum payment is applied to the zero percent tranche. Then additional payments during the same payment cycle over the minimum payment are applied to higher APR balances, until those higher balances are cleared, then steps down to apply payments to the lower APR again.

Just pay the minimum payment, plus an additional $100 and that should take care of it. You could even do that right now, before the next statement prints.

To confirm this, look at your statement and note that there are several rates applied to different sets of balances. One of those balances is Purchases with a specific APR, another balance is your 0% Balance Transfer.

You have NOT lost the zero percent on the BT balance.

Take a BT from Discover card #2 to your bank account, then pay off Discover #1. That should about cover it.

And if TempurPedic is merely “Deferred Interest” be SURE to pay that completely before that Deferred period ends.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

K-in-Boston — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 23:47:19 GMT

@CreditInspired is correct. (Edit: And @NRB525 - it took me a while to write that. LOL) You merely lose your grace period on new purchases. Just pay at least the minimum payment plus new purchases and interest; you would only accrue pennies of interest on the new purchase and as long as the payment was appropriate it would only be for one cycle. Was this a BT on an existing Citi card or a new one? Citi usually has 0% introductory purchase APRs along with 0% BT offers, so this might be a completely moot point. Regardless, do not pay off that BT in full! If you opened a new BT card with a 3% fee just to move that balance, that would have cost you $75 in fees to avoid a few pennies in interest.

The utilization on Cash Magnet (60%), Citi (62.5%), and Tempurpedic (43.9%) are probably dragging your scores down a bit, but utilization has no memory and that will come down as you pay them off. At 0% it's free money that's letting you pay other things off or down, so I would concentrate on that rather than scores.

Is the Tempurpedic also at 0%? If there's any interest of signifigance on that, I would consider BTing that to Discover #2 (although from my understanding of your last post, there may not be any BT offers available on that card?). Same for the Care Credit.

Have you received a CLI on any of your Amex cards in the past 181 days? If not, it would be helpful to ask for $18,000 on your BCP and if granted (they will counteroffer if needed) consider moving some of that limit to the ED.

You otherwise seem to be in good shape other than the Discover card's expiring offer. So basically four options here:

Apply for a new BT card, such as Chase Slate (if you have an offer for it that will override 5/24 rule), Bank of America BankAmericard, or a card with a BT offer from Navy FCU (if eligible) or PenFed (everyone is eligible, but you may need to pay a 1-time fee to join an organization). Move the Discover card balance there, and if possible, anything else you are currently paying interest on.
Move your Discover balance onto other cards with their standard BT rate and fee (yeah, like 1x.xx% or 2x.xx%) and then BT other balances back to the Discover card if there is a BT offer available on it. If you are unable to pay down the balances quickly, do the math and that would still likely save you money.
Move most of your Discover balance onto Citi with your current BT offer that would still save you money, but you will have very high utilization and possibly a further temporary score drop due to it. Certainly don't go above 90% of the limit, though.
Just eat the interest on the Discover and pay it down as quickly as you possibly can.

Also, to help with your utilization, in addition to the Amex question I posed earlier, have you asked for CLIs from Discover, CapOne and Citi (the latter only if their website says "a credit report will not be requested") lately? Those would all be soft pulls (notice that Citi language, though), including Amex, and you have nothing to lose and possibly some points back if you get some yeses.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 23:46:55 GMT

Wow thankkkkkk you for the clarification! See, I would love to use discover for a balance transfer but I’ve never been given an offer, other than at account opening. And that card is actually my oldest at 5 years. Tempurpedic was just recently opened in August, and that’s 0% for 4 years (very generous) but it will only take maybe 6mo-1 year. I would have had the discover #1 balance paid long ago, but car repairs came knocking.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 00:04:40 GMT

I recently had the BCP increased from 2k to 6k, in fact, that hasn’t even reported to be included in my current total utilization lol. My 6 month CLI mark with Citi is Nov 21, and cap one won’t grant me a CLI because I rarely use the card. As with discover, I think we can all agree they are very temperamental with CLIs, but it’s been about 4 months since my last and usage has fluctuated from high to only small monthly recurring expenses.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

CreditInspired — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 00:35:44 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Wow thankkkkkk you for the clarification! See, I would love to use discover for a balance transfer but I’ve never been given an offer, other than at account opening. And that card is actually my oldest at 5 years. Tempurpedic was just recently opened in August, and that’s 0% for 4 years (very generous) but it will only take maybe 6mo-1 year. I would have had the discover #1 balance paid long ago, but car repairs came knocking.

Are you sure you don't have a Disco offer? I ask because it took me about a year to learn that offers weren’t mailed with a check attached or emailed. Someone posted that they had an offer in their online portal. So I looked and voila, there were 2 offers. I don't know what I would do without this forum.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 01:38:40 GMT

Yes I have called and asked twice in the past 6 months for both accounts with no offers Otherwise discover would be perfect

Re: Balance Transfer Options

NRB525 — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 03:23:38 GMT

Are you using the second Discover for regular charges, and paying in full?

What monthly payment rate are you paying down the Discover #1?

Re: Balance Transfer Options

SouthJamaica — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 03:44:38 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
So I have quite a few cards:
Amex ED- 0/1000
Amex gold- 0 bal
Amex cash mag-1200/2000 (0% until 8/2020)
Amex BCP- daily card, spend about 1200-1500 per month and PIF. 6k limit
Discover IT- 2100/9000 (0% until 10/4/19)
Discover #2- 0/7600
Ulta-0/5250
VS-0/5000
Cap one- 49.99/1350
Care credit-800/15k
Citi-2500/4000 (0% until 9/2020)
Tempurpedic-2500/5700

I only want to pay off Citi because I made a mistake and purchased a drink during my BT, forgetting I would be billed interest, thus making the 0% interest worthless. I’m in my early 20s so my oldest card is from 2014. I guess my concern was more or less if applying for a new card would be more beneficial or harmful for my situation. Pretty much all of the cards besides my care credit promos and the others listed, are/will be 20 something % when they expire. The only BT I have right now is 10.99% for 12 months for Citi, nothing from my other lenders

I think you don't need any more cards.

As others have pointed out, the purchase during balance transfer period is not that big a deal and nothing to lose sleep over.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 10:19:49 GMT

I rotate which card I use daily between discover #2 and my BCP, I switch probably monthly, as for discover #1, I was paying about $600 monthly to that card alone but life happened and now I’m paying between 100-150 per month

Re: Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 10:37:13 GMT

@Anonymous over a number of years I ran into the no BTs too?! Someone told me to call in and that was both Citi Bank and Discover Bank. Was fortunate to get good CSRs and they found me BTs that seem to not be available but, they got me connected?!

Food for thought if you haven't already traveled this path.

Re: Balance Transfer Options

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 13:23:18 GMT

Discover plays a weird game, but they've been good to me so I'll stick with em. Just trying to do my best with the situation im in. I've called in once to Discover, but it may be worthwhile to try again with them and my other issuers?? I'll call, and update here if i have any luck