BT Scheme help

[Anonymous]

So I'm trying to chop down the CC debt as quickly as possible and thought the use of BT's would be a good way to accomplish that.

I currently have:

$8800 on my Citi card at a so-so 16% APR
$1200 on Discover at a terrible 27%
$800 on Cap1 at an equally terrible 27%

I'm at about 41% utilization so I'm getting there, but I've been recently offered some interesting BT options. Discover is offering a year @ 3.99%, I think (maybe it was 2.99%). I have a CL of $8200. I also have an offer from Chase for a few things: 0% for a year or 2.99% for the lifetime of the BT. I picked up some extra work and have about $3000 to play with (the rest will be tucked away in a savings account for next April). I was thinking of clearing out the Discover and Cap1 and then using the rest to cut away the Citi debt.

What's best way of arranging my BT options in your opinion? I don't think I'd be able to pay off the rest within a year since I don't make much, but I was thinking that a month or two before the rates get jacked up I could reshuffle some BT's again. Perhaps hope for some more or better offers?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Math_Rocks]

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@Anonymous wrote:
So I'm trying to chop down the CC debt as quickly as possible and thought the use of BT's would be a good way to accomplish that.

I currently have:

$8800 on my Citi card at a so-so 16% APR
$1200 on Discover at a terrible 27%
$800 on Cap1 at an equally terrible 27%

@I'm at about 41% utilization so I'm getting there, but I've been recently offered some interesting BT options. Discover is offering a year @ 3.99%, I think (maybe it was 2.99%). I have a CL of $8200. I also have an offer from Chase for a few things: 0% for a year or 2.99% for the lifetime of the BT. I picked up some extra work and have about $3000 to play with (the rest will be tucked away in a savings account for next April). I was thinking of clearing out the Discover and Cap1 and then using the rest to cut away the Citi debt.

What's best way of arranging my BT options in your opinion? I don't think I'd be able to pay off the rest within a year since I don't make much, but I was thinking that a month or two before the rates get jacked up I could reshuffle some BT's again. Perhaps hope for some more or better offers?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

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Just my opinion but I would use Chase's 2.99% lifetime offer to pay Discover and Cap One and as much of the Citi balance as possible. (This will probably prompt Discover to lower your purchase rate and may even prompt even better BT offers from them.) Once that settled, I'd get the rest of Citi onto the Discover.

It's very important, though, that if you use the Chase lifetime offer, you don't use the card for ANYTHING else until the balance gets paid. This is because all of your payments will go to the lower rate balance and any new purchases will rack up interest the whole time you are paying the low rate balance off. HTH

[Anonymous]

Pay off Cap1 and Discover and apply the remaining $1000 to Citi. If you do as the previous poster suggested, you'll be adding another $60 to your balance. Without knowing the CL of your Chase card, I find it difficult to proceed.

[Creditaddict]

I agree. pay off discover and cap1 and put the rest on citi. If room transfer the remainder citi balance to 2.9 fixed for like chase.

[Anonymous]

Oops. Meant to say that my Chase CL is $3000.

[Creditaddict]

I may be different then others, but I like if at all possible for the whole balance to be in one place, so I would use the discover BT offer AFTER you pay current balance off if it would hold the whole citi balance. if not you will have to split it up between discover and chase

[Anonymous]

Have you checked to see if Citi is offering BT offer? If you aren't concerned with FICO, I would agree with the entire balance on one card. I would then work on getting rate reduction on cap1 and Citi. Check on BT offer from Citi after it is paid off.

[Anonymous]

If the 3K is money that is actually yours and not from a CC, I would use it to pay off Cap1 and Discover and take what you can off of Citi.  Then I would call Chase and let them know that you're interested in using the card for a BT, but that to do so you would need to have a higher limit.  It will cost you a hard inquiry, but then you could have that balance on a low interest rate. 

In my opinion, if you know you can't pay the balance off in 1 year, don't transfer it to Discover or Cap1.  There is no guarentee that a year from now you will be able to get those amounts transferred to a lower interest rate card, and to have to pay 27% interest is horrible!