How much to transfer a balance to a card without affecting fico?

[Anonymous]

I wanted to transfer or use one of the balance transfer checks from barclay to pay my discover card. I have a 6k cl on Barclay and on Discover I have a balance of 5,723.07 with Available Credit: $10,777 Total Credit Line: $16,500. Is it okay to transfer 3k to barclay or would that make a dip in my fico score?

[coldfusion]

There would almost certainly be a dip in your FICO score (exactly how much is YMMV) because you would be at 50% utilization on your BarclayUS card but as you paid that down your scores would rebound.  The amount of drop could be partially mitigated by the related utilization drop on your Discover card so the actual impact on your scores is impossible to predict truly accurately. 

A drop in your FICO scores is OK too.

[Anonymous]

I have approx 5700 on discover that has a promo ending on June 20. I want to transfer 1500 of that  to barclay. I plan to buy a car at the end of this month possibly! Really need one at the moment. I also plan to look at housing this year. I am helping mom with mortgage and bills atm. My fico score right now is 788. It was 800 but I believe it took a dip as I used a promo on a chase sapphire card. I only have 26k in savings that is mine from just working. The barclay card has a cl of 6k with no balance on it right now. It has a 2% transfer fee. What amount or what percentage of that could I transfer over? 

[SouthJamaica]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I wanted to transfer or use one of the balance transfer checks from barclay to pay my discover card. I have a 6k cl on Barclay and on Discover I have a balance of 5,723.07 with Available Credit: $10,777 Total Credit Line: $16,500. Is it okay to transfer 3k to barclay or would that make a dip in my fico score?

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It will cause a dip but probably not a huge one. Just make it $2800 or $2900 rather than $3000, as 50% is an individual card utilization threshold.

[HeavenOhio]

@Anonymous, I think you're looking at a dip after the dust settles. You'd be going from 34% utilization on a single card to two cards with balances: Barclays at 50% utilization and Discover at 17%. Of course, overall utilization will remain the same.

Another thing to keep in mind that it's possible that both full balances could show up on your report for a brief period and you'll have a more significant short-term dip. It's also possible that the reverse could happen and there could be a period where neither balance shows up, giving you a temporary gain.

We'd probably have a better idea if you could list all of your cards along with their limits and balances. One problem is that you mention one score, and several scores may come into play during the loan process. The good news is that the score you're giving us is high and could possibly take a dip without affecting your loan.

An idea might be to transfer $2850. That would put the Barclays card at 48% utilization, which would be safely under the 49% threshold. Or you could absorb some interest on the Discover card and transfer once the auto transaction is complete.

[KatSoDak]

What is the interest rate on Discover once the promo ends?  If it is around 13% you can roughly figure you will pay about 1% per month on the remaining balance after you transfer to Barclays. 

Transferring $1700 to Barclays @ a 2% fee will cost $34.  That would leave $4000 on Discover, which will incur interest. Like I said above, if you have the 12.99% rate you can figure interest will be a little more than $40 a month the first month and dropping as you pay down the balance. 

This through napkin figuring since I obviously don't know your APR.