lhendricks92 said:cyberkost said: Lhendricks92, is your "Fidelity AM.EX gold card" a debit card?
Kittenmittens, are you sure your Fidelity AM.EX is a debit card? (I've never seen an AM.EX branded debit card)
If I put together what the two of you report it seems that the key thing is that the card is AMEX branded .. how do I get one? I'm not sure it's technically a "debit card." More like a charge card that is automatically paid in full from your brokerage account when the statement closes. Regardless, Fidelity stopped issuing them recently. Guess I'm grandfathered. I have one also. Not sure whether it is technicaly a debit card, but it is based on the Fidelity "core" cash account. I can confirm that when I called a few months ago the CSR I spoke with said it was an "old" category of account, and no longer offered as far as he knew. I've not yet tried a BalTran to this card (for situations where you cannot get the BalTran sent to you as a check, ACHed to a bank account, etc.).

Negative Balance on a credit card:

So this is basically when you have a 0 balance on one of your credit cards, and then do a balance transfer from ANOTHER credit card. And since you have a 0 balance, it will 'zap', lets say $10K, into that credit card with 0 balance. Then there will be a negative 10K balance? Is this correct?

That's not recommended correct?

Also, I am unfamiliar with HELOC, maybe because I don't own a home yet. So i'm assuming I can't use this technique since I dont have a home nor a HELOC, or am I wrong here and can still use this technique?

Hello Torchedlh, thanks for the 411. Although I dont have a citi card. I have a discover, capital one, and chase. I dont know if those work or not for balanaces of 15K to 30K... (QuickSummary says Discover & CapOne work for "modest amounts.")

My current CL's:
Discover 3.8K
CapOne around 4.7K
Chase 7.5K or so

Adding to what cardjuggler said, my citi cardmember agreement (for a Home Rebate mastercard opened 3/2007) had language stating that you won't cause the balance to go negative in an amount exceeding your credit limit.

Here is one interesting data point for those who want to BT to debit card.

I have done a BT to my debit card before without any problem, and the BT went into my linked checking account. But yesterday I got an email msg from one of my banks regarding a suspicious transaction. It turned out to be a $1.00 transaction from USBank credit card dept. I have asked USBank (Linux card - lots of FWFer have this one) to BT to my debit card and they'd do a test debit first before doing a full amount BT (~18K) deposit. But my bank noticed the transaction and put my card on security hold. I had to call in to ask them to remove it. Hadn't I got the msg, I'm afraid my BT to my debit card would fail. Therefore for those who do BT to debit card, just make sure your debit card wouldn't get knocked down by CC's testing drive. I'm still not sure why USBank needs this extra step, maybe just for caution. I'm still waiting for my BT showing up in my check account in the next couple of days.

This's just my experience and I'd like to share.

mydann, BTing to HELOC is well-known around here. Could you please elaborate on your item 2.

It's actually quite interesting! Thank for coming back to clarify and thinking outside the box! I'm surprised it was not mentioned (afaik) before. Yes, technically a margin account is a loan, so this should work much like HELOC as a BT destination ... on the other hand, this would be like buying securities with a credit card and the days when it was possible are long since gone ...

A question to those who've BTed to HELOC: you were not required to have a card with 16-digit number attached to it in order to BT, just the routing and the acct. number, right?

borednewb said:I have a quick question. I want to write all the checks to my friend and he will write me a check back. Will he suffer any tax liablity issues because of this.
Nope ... unless he floats your money for a while -- then he'll have to pay tax on the interest earned.

If you can get a credit card account on which you can write checks, this is ideal. I have one, but would prefer not to name the lender. It has a $20K credit limit, so I write a $19.9K check on that account about the same time as I arrange a balance transfer. They don't usually get there at the exact same time, but it's close. If the check hits first, I pay a little interest. I have run over $1.2M through this account in the past ten years. If the BT is over $20K, I have a brief credit balance, but no questions have been raised. I think others do this with a credit card linked to a HELOC.

I just recently got a offer for 0%apr $0bt fee from chase for one of their card. They will only let me transfer to other cc.
My questions are:
1)Has anyone tried to send the money to their own chase debit card and then withdraw the money from their checking account?
2)I have a scottrade account, has anyone been successful in transferring the money from a chase offer like this to their scottrade stock account?
3)Anyone tried this with commerce bank(east coast i suppose)?
4)I have only a BOA card beside chase and I read that doing this with BOA is just a PITA, correct?
5)What method from the above would be best and are there any other better options/methods?

TIA