Preventing Balance Chasing while Paying Off All Cards

[gregacher]

Looking for some helpful advice here.  Not looking to be roasted or anything.  I got into a bad spot over the last 4 years and got into a horrible credit card debt situation.  Never missed a single payment, but was up to nearly 10 maxed out cards with very high balances.  I recently came into a very large sum of money and am going to pay off every single one.  Looking for the best strategy to prevent as much balance chasing/CLD's as possible.  I know they're coming, not naive about that.  Just looking for advice to minimize them.  Here's what I had:

Citi/Costco: $15000

Citi/American Airlines: $10500

Amex Delta Platinum: $20000

Citi BestBuy: $10000

Synchony Amazon Prime: $10000

Bank of America Americard Platinum: $14000

My current strategy is to pay them off the latest date possible date of the statement cycle.  I found with Citi that they won't do a CDL until 2 business days after a payment is made, and won't update a credit report with the CLD until the next statement is issued.  So if I catch it at the exact right date, credit report would be udpated with the $0 balance and the still high limit.  Citi makes that easy becuase any payment made online prior to 5PM the day before the statement date will post that day, and the statement will report to the bureaus the next day.  Other lenders make that difficult when they take longer to post payments.  

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Slabenstein]

If you have the money to pay off every single balance and that's the best use of that money for you, then the most you can do is pay them all off today and let the chips fall.  It sounds like you're asking about a payoff timing and order strategy with different lenders so one lender would see payment to another on your credit reports, but, as it seems like you're aware, the issuers that are going to balance chase you have probably already made that decision.

[Dancingbear45]

@gregacher 

If you have the available funds I'd recommend paying them off right away too. Every day they are accruing interest. It's better to pay them off. If they have made an adverse decisions they are already in place. By paying them off you have peace of mind and don't have to worry about accumulating any more debt from the interest. Also if you do end any CLD you are in a good position to  try recon. 

[Dancingbear45]

@gregacher 

I know you listed balances but what is your current utilization rate at with those balances?

[NoMoreE46]

Pay them all off now.

If you pay them in Full there's no balance for them to chase....

[SouthJamaica]

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@gregacher wrote:

Looking for some helpful advice here.  Not looking to be roasted or anything.  I got into a bad spot over the last 4 years and got into a horrible credit card debt situation.  Never missed a single payment, but was up to nearly 10 maxed out cards with very high balances.  I recently came into a very large sum of money and am going to pay off every single one.  Looking for the best strategy to prevent as much balance chasing/CLD's as possible.  I know they're coming, not naive about that.  Just looking for advice to minimize them.  Here's what I had:

Citi/Costco: $15000

Citi/American Airlines: $10500

Amex Delta Platinum: $20000

Citi BestBuy: $10000

Synchony Amazon Prime: $10000

Bank of America Americard Platinum: $14000

My current strategy is to pay them off the latest date possible date of the statement cycle.  I found with Citi that they won't do a CDL until 2 business days after a payment is made, and won't update a credit report with the CLD until the next statement is issued.  So if I catch it at the exact right date, credit report would be udpated with the $0 balance and the still high limit.  Citi makes that easy becuase any payment made online prior to 5PM the day before the statement date will post that day, and the statement will report to the bureaus the next day.  Other lenders make that difficult when they take longer to post payments.  

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

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Since you have enough money to pay them all off, you should just pay them all off. They're not going to balance chase if there's no balance.

[Anonymous]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

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Since you have enough money to pay them all off, you should just pay them all off. They're not going to balance chase if there's no balance.

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Right, but isn't the endpoint of balance chasing card closure?   I agree with paying them off to avoid interest, and any AA is already planned by the issuers, but PIF may lead to some of the cards being closed...  But since they are unusable now, being maxed out, it's a "good" solution

[NoMoreE46]

I would think an important factor besides the UTI  is the duration of the high balances.

@gregacher - would you elaborate as to since when these cards have been maxxed?    Has it really been escalating over the past Four years? 

[JoeRockhead]

Some really good advice here already. Perhaps the single biggest reason people get balance chased is to prevent them from charging more to the card.

You can try to head that off, or remove that scenario from the algorithms, and signal to your lenders that your intentions to control your spending, and debt are sincere by preemptively freezing all your cards. This prevents you from using them further. Pay your balances off as you intend to do, wait for your next statement cycles to close on each card before you unfreeze that particular card.

Maybe this works for you, maybe it doesn't but, costs you nothing to try. Let us know what happens.

[pip3man]

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@JoeRockhead wrote:

Some really good advice here already. Perhaps the single biggest reason people get balance chased is to prevent them from charging more to the card.

You can try to head that off, or remove that scenario from the algorithms, and signal to your lenders that your intentions to control your spending, and debt are sincere by preemptively freezing all your cards. This prevents you from using them further. Pay your balances off as you intend to do, wait for your next statement cycles to close on each card before you unfreeze that particular card.

Maybe this works for you, maybe it doesn't but, costs you nothing to try. Let us know what happens.

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In the banking/credit world, things don't necessarily work the way you stated it. First of all, balance chasing is a systematic action. Sometimes a Risk analyst would manually decision an adverse action with certain accounts but the vast majority are automated. I say that to say - freezing a card will certainly NOT stall or prevent it from happening. If the account has already been shortlisted for balance chasing, that's bound to happen come rain or sunshine. Ever wondered why people still get balance chased even right after paying off an account in full? To your point, balance chasing is initiated for two reasons - to limit the credit issuers risk exposure and to prevent additional charges that could lead the balance to spiral out of control even further.