I'm trying to decide if I should transfer a balance, since most of you have a superior understanding of the credit game I was hoping to get some advice. Here are my cards and balances/limits:
1. Amex Everyday - 0/1000 (New account, no card yet)
2. Amex BCE - 0/1000 (New account, no card yet)
3. Chase Freedom - 0/2500 (New account, no card yet)
4. Chase Amazon - 0/1000
5. Cap 1 QS1 - 0/3300
6. Cap 1 Platinum - 1373/3500
Around 900 of the 1373 balance on the Platinum was just transferred from the Chase Amazon. I wasn't planning on applying for any new cards a week or so ago, and I had a balance transfer offer on the Platinum of no transfer fee. Both the Platinum and QS1 had CLI's of 3,000 when their statements hit this month, so this gave me room to transfer the Chase balance and significantly reduce my utilization. The problem is that the Platinum card has a high interest rate, 24.9%.
Both Amex cards and the Chase Freedom have 0% APR deals on purchases/transfers for the next 15 months. Even though it would give me a high utilization on the Freedom card would it still make sense to transfer the entire Platinum balance to take advantage of the zero interest? I'm also going to be taking advantage of the spend 500 get 200 back offer the Freedom card offers and I'm going to be doing it this month. With the 5% cash back at Amazon right now I'm going to buy 500 worth of Christmas gifts on this card, giving me 200 back for the intro offer plus an extra 25 in cash back. So with no other charges outside of the transfer and ~500 to Amazon the balance would be around 1900, giving me a utilization of around 75%.
That's very high, but would having a balance report on only one card combined with swapping 24.9% interest with 0% interst, make it worth it? I could move a few hundred over to the Amex cards and then transfer the rest to the Freedom card, but I really want to limit the number of cards that report a balance.
It will probably take me 4-6 months to pay this balance in full factoring in other financial obligations and future charges, so if this were your situation what would you do?
Just did the calculations. Looks like it will cost around 40 bucks to transfer this balance, and if I keep it with the Platinum card it will be around 30 bucks in interest per month. Paying off the balance sooner, four months, would be around 120 bucks in interest. So all in all if I transfer the balance I'll save around 80 bucks over the next four months. I think I'm going to transfer the balance, but I'll see what you guys have to say first.
@Creditaddict wrote:Yes put the entire balance on the Freedom.
So it's better to have one account with high utilization than it is to have several accounts reporting a balance? I was thinking of putting 300 on both Amex cards to kind of spread it out a bit, keep the Freedom at around 50 percent utilization instead of 75 percent. This would give me three cards with a balance though, instead of just one.
I guess I can't really argue with someone that has 65 cards though haha....I thought I was getting out of control with six.