Help me make a plan? Thanks! :)

[-Cain-]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I have a BoA Better Rewards card with a 0% APR BT offer until July of next year, so I was hoping to maybe transfer half of the balance from the Discover onto that in order to save a little money, but.... if it's not worth considering, I may not bother.  As you say, it's not THAT high, but 40% util on one card kind of bothers me....

No BT fees on the BoA, by the way, which is also an incentive.  I do think that splitting up the balance onto different accounts will motivate me to pay it down faster because it doesn't LOOK so overwhelming.  It's the same exact amount, I know, but two 3500 dollar balances "look" better than one big 7000 one.  

---

Oh then now you should absolutely take advantage of it - no BT fees and 0% APR for a year... that'll save you bunches of money!

What's the limit on the BoA? Because the more money you move onto it, the more money you save by getting it out of that 19.99% APR. Since it's 0% I'd just try to put as much as you're comfortable with onto it, even if it means the card is at 70-80%. If you need help feeling comfortable with a high % utilization, I'd do the interest calculations to see how much you'd save, and that might motivate you. Every $1000 you take off the discover card will save you $200+ in interest over a year.

Then I'd put majority of the money towards paying off whatever balance remains on the 19.99% discover, to save interest. Once that's paid off, then begin paying down the balance on the 0%.

And good luck finding/buying a nice house!

---

Was the 0% BT fee on your BofA card a promo? I've only seen 3% whenever I've checked into applying for that card. If it truly is 0%, just do the BT and pay it off.

[Anonymous]

---

@-Cain- wrote:

Was the 0% BT fee on your BofA card a promo? 

---

Ack, I just double-checked that... and you're right, it IS 3%.  Ugh.  

This might change the game some, although I'm still thinking that it might be worth it just to not pay a triple digit interest fee on the Discover card.  I'd rather pay 105 dollars one time than repeatedly.

I'll obviously have to work out more math, though. 

Thank you for prompting me to check that.  This may change things.

[Anonymous]

That does complicate things a little, but it still seems beneficial to transfer as much as you're comfortable with to the 0% card. I'm bored so I've been doing some calculations to try to figure out how much to transfer. I think somewhere around $5300 onto the BoA card is a good amount, and puts you at ~75%, which is high but still leaves some room.

With the 3% BT fee, how much you should move onto BoA kinda depends on how fast you think you could pay down the Discover balance after doing the BT. $5300 is a decent amount if you think you could pay down the Discover $1700 over about 6 months (while also paying down some of the 5300), because you end up paying about equal interest on the BT fee and the discover interest over that period. Then try to get the 5300 paid off before the 0% ends.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice!  After talking with my husband, we decided to put 3500 on the BoA and 3500 on a Citi Simplicity - both have more or less the same offer (0% APR for X amount of months - BoA is 12, Citi is 21 months, 3% transaction charge).  I honestly thought my husband would blow a gasket at the thought of paying 210 dollars in BT charges, but he said he'd rather pay that one time than hand over tons and tons of interest charges to Discover - and he's right.

Thanks for helping me.