Credit Card Consolidation/Card Balance Transfers

[Anonymous]

Anyone had any luck with "Balance Transfers" or a Consolidation loan?  Between my wife and I,  we have about 70K in Credit Card Debt.  Our scores are bewteen 650-700,  depending on which bureau.   We have not had any missed payments & are not "over the limit" on any of the cards.   I have just been trying to figure out a way or talk to a credit card company that will allow us to transfer all or the majority of the debt,  over to one card with 0.0% balance transfer or even split it all between 2 cards.   The problem I am running into,  every card I have found with 0.0% will either approve us for a stupid low limit or not at all.  Example,  we have a US Bank Card with a 25K limit,  what good does a AMEX approval for 1K do me?  Plenty of household income to continue to pay the bills,  just feel we are spinning our wheels & blowing a ton of money at these "higher rates".   We currently have 2-Chase, 1-USBANK,  2-Citi, 1-BOA,  1-NFCU, 2-Amex Delta-Gold, 1-Cap One, 1-Discover, 2-Usaa, Target, Sleep Number, Lowes, Home Depot,  and a few others.   Any ideas?  

[Remedios]

Hi!

If you've ran a lot of CC debt, most issuers are going to be unwilling to extend additional credit, and those that do, will often do it under less than stellar terms

In order to try and help you, it would be beneficial to list your cards with limits, utilization and APRs.

That way some people can help you create at least a pay down plan till you get in a place where BT/loan is a possibility 

[AverageJoesCredit]

Great advice @Remedios

Op, we have alot of great members with vast experience in moving limits around but they need to see what you are working with. Id like to call on @K-in-Boston and @tcbofade , whom im sure can help once they see what you have. Good luck Op

[NRB525]

It is doubtful you are going to get 1 or 2 cards to take that all on as 0% APR.

The thing to do is, as requested above, list out all your cards, their limits, current balance, current APR. The most likely sequence that will help you is to figure out where you can generate an "open slot", a card that handles Balance Transfer, move an amount from another card to that first "open slot" and from that second card free up another "second open slot" that handles Balance Transfers. By structuring a sequence in this way, you should be able to take a fair amount of the balances into lower APR settings, for 12 months or so. Then you have to be able to do it again after the year, so you still need to try to pay down cards to free up BT space.

You seem to have cards that are likely to allow this: NFCU, USAA, US Bank, Citi, BofA, and Discover. Chase and CapOne are possible, though not as common. AMEX and the others are not going to work at all for this.

A large part of this is also focusing payments where they will help to free up BT Space on existing cards. Are you already paying significantly more than the minium payment amounts?

[tcbofade]

As Joey mentioned, @K-in-Boston  might be the master here, I am the trainee. 

JUST got done shuffling balances around for the new year.  My wife and I are ALSO carrying a lot of credit card debt, and this year will be carrying the vast majority of it at zero percent interest, with a small fraction at 1.9%.  This is doable, but might take some time.

As mentioned, we'll need more details.  Sorry.  But we're happy to help!

NFCU is offering balance transfers for 0 or 1.9% for another six days... do you have any room on your NFCU cards?

How is your cranberry?  (credit card utilization ratio)  How's the wifes?  Any joint accounts?