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I have
Chase Freedom CL 2500
Cap One Platinum CL 2000
AmEx Cash Everyday CL 10,000
Discover It Chrome CL 9,500
So I recently applied for and got the AmEx with 0% interest for 14 months for balance transfers. I moved over ALL balances from my cards and my wife's cards to it. Now I'm sitting at $4,354 balance (ALL on the AmEx). I'm on a mini "spree" to get more CL, so I (even more recently) applied for and got the Discover mentioned above.
Now I'm at 18% TOTAL Utilization (across ALL cards), but since all of it is on the AmEx, I'm at 43.5% Utilization within the single card.
My question is, should I eat the cost of doing ANOTHER partial transfer from the 43.5% full AmEx to the Discover (which ALSO has 0% interest on transfers) to spread out the balances and get both the Discover and the AmEx below 29% within each card? Within 6 months, I will have my total utilization below 9%, working my way to 1%.
A little background, in a little over 2 years I want to get a mortgage. I'm at 689 FICO-8 and 665 Vantage. The credit increases, adding nearly 20K of CL, and SIGNIFICANTLY dropping my overall utilization, were only 2 weeks ago and have NOT "hit" yet with any CRAs. I also took out a Self Lender loan recently. So I am looking to raise my score, hopefully to 760 before my 2 year goal. So, my score increases do NOT have to be within the next few months.
Utilization has no memory. So the hit that you take with a higher than normal utilization will disappear as soon as the balance is updated with the CRAs. Unless you were looking for more credit in the next 6 months and absolutely need to optimize your scores I wouldn't eat another transfer fee just to tamp down that util. Just garden for 6 months, pay down your balances as planned and all will be shiny.
Agreed, lower utilization doesn't decrease overall debt. Something Mortgage companies look at, and consider more important than utilization.
@Anonymous wrote:I have
Chase Freedom CL 2500
Cap One Platinum CL 2000
AmEx Cash Everyday CL 10,000
Discover It Chrome CL 9,500
So I recently applied for and got the AmEx with 0% interest for 14 months for balance transfers. I moved over ALL balances from my cards and my wife's cards to it. Now I'm sitting at $4,354 balance (ALL on the AmEx). I'm on a mini "spree" to get more CL, so I (even more recently) applied for and got the Discover mentioned above.
Now I'm at 18% TOTAL Utilization (across ALL cards), but since all of it is on the AmEx, I'm at 43.5% Utilization within the single card.
My question is, should I eat the cost of doing ANOTHER partial transfer from the 43.5% full AmEx to the Discover (which ALSO has 0% interest on transfers) to spread out the balances and get both the Discover and the AmEx below 29% within each card? Within 6 months, I will have my total utilization below 9%, working my way to 1%.A little background, in a little over 2 years I want to get a mortgage. I'm at 689 FICO-8 and 665 Vantage. The credit increases, adding nearly 20K of CL, and SIGNIFICANTLY dropping my overall utilization, were only 2 weeks ago and have NOT "hit" yet with any CRAs. I also took out a Self Lender loan recently. So I am looking to raise my score, hopefully to 760 before my 2 year goal. So, my score increases do NOT have to be within the next few months.
You will gain absolutely nothing down the road from doing a balance transfer, so no you should not.
What you should do now is (a) stop applying for credit and (b) pay everything down.
That would be the way to position yourself for your mortgage application.