Bank of America Balance Assist

[haleyjen]

Has anyone tried one?  Is there a hard credit pull?

[K-in-Boston]

I hadn't heard of this before (it's new and not available everywhere yet), but this looks like a fantastic alternative to payday loans.

The $5 fee is the only fee charged for opening a Balance Assist™ loan and there are no other interest or finance charges. To help you compare this to other products in the market, the $5 fee would translate into an effective Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of 5.99% to 29.76%, depending on the amount borrowed. Repayment is made monthly over a period of three months. Example: If you took a $100 Balance Assist loan, your total to repay would be $105, with a payment of $35 due in 30 days, $35 due in 60 days and $35 in 90 days.

It seems to just be an advance paid and automatically scheduled for payment from your eligible checking account over 3 months, and the eligibility criteria doesn't mention a credit pull or being subject to credit approval.  It's possible that it could result in a pull, but I can't even go to the application page for it to pretend that I am applying; assuming it's not available here in Mass yet.

[Anonymous]

Yes it is a hard credit pull it looks like it pulled EQ and Transunion. the language was we need to check your credit. then a disclamer about if they do they will inform of who and what score was returend. i didnt get a score or who they pulled it went through and approved about thirty minutes latter i got the notifications about the credit alerts. I just really screwed up by taking the pull i should have waited till monday where i could call and make sure it was a soft pull. and worse it looks like its going to report as a consumer finance account. i will know when it reports the account.

so yes its probably a great deal for someone in actual need.......but a hard pull and a consumer finance account is not going to help anybodies score or profile. I probably tanked my profile for 6 months. I just apped and approved 30 min ago i will know more tommorow or the day  after.

but over all a good program 5 dollars for 500 for 3 months aut payments or manual money was all ready in account before the discolusure popped up to print.

Robert

[Dj4Money]

I have been a BofA customer for over three years. I applied and was denied. 

They are going to send me an email detailing why. Not too disappointed I wanted to see if I could get it, oh well. 

 US Bank has a similar offer but you have to have your account there for min 6 months. 

[SoCalGardener]

When I logged out of BofA earlier today, it showed me an offer for Balance Assist, and I picked the 'dismiss' button. Now I wish I had at least read it so I'd know how it works, but it looks like @Anonymous has it covered!

[gingerflower]

@Anonymous 

Thank you for the info. I got the offer to but haven't decided to apply. 

[Dj4Money]

 Well I got the letter.

 The way it's worded, I think what why they denied me is because the last three months the majority of money coming into my account has been PPP money and back EDD payments.

 Uber made Postmates driver switch to the Ubereats app. I've been with Uber since 2015, so I don't know why my background check has taken so long.  In the meantime I applied to Instacart and waiting on the debit card in the mail.

 I didn't actually needed it but don't want to take out a cash advance out of one of my cards. The IR would end up being less using the program. 

[Anonymous]

I applied and was approved the first time around but when I applied a second time it was denied so now I'm wondering what went wrong. I haven't received an email yet so I guess I'll wait to see. Nothing has changed financially in the last 90 days so it just makes me wonder.

[Dj4Money]

That's interesting.

I still want to try BofA because the past couple of months I have used Possible. However they have only bumped me from $175 up to $250.

 Experian says if I reduce my monthly payments by $34, my debt to income ratio would drop to 35% which makes me more favorable to lenders, so maybe Possible would allow me to borrow more? The interest rate is still high around 200% but you can split it up into payments to make it more managable.

 Moving forward I want as many lending options as I can get. Currently working on semi-passive income streams. I am tired of trying to bootstrap my ideas, you need money to make money

 I've flirted with paying off the Lending Club loan ($1200) as I really don't need another installment style loan but could as I said above use more capital to widen my options, at the time paying it off I had to wait 10 days to re-apply and see if I could more money based on internal scoring and perfect payment history (autopay), I didn't know if I needed the money a little later in the month.

 I made an error in judgement and it's costing me. If I had paid off the loan, it's likely just based on that I would be able to borrow more money at a lower interest rate.

 I have three ideas but they all need funding. One can reduce their expenses especially in this inflation cycle by relocating. Great but you still need to pay for plane tickets, that increases your cost that much to take action.

 What I can do is re-fi the car, however I like Capital One and rather stay but they won't refi their own loans. RIght now the only decent offer is from Open Road Loans.

 
 Capital One has a 10 day grace period, where Open Road Loans does not.

 I'd like to refi with BofA but they aren't being aggressive in that market anymore.