Why did u BT 30k of 30600, arent u afraid of the stories from othes about random closing of accounts? Or are you just gonna take a risk with this one

Found out through an automated phone system that I got approved for the BofA card. Yay! Don't know the credit limit, or if it got me over the $100k mark. Other than that, I'm out of town, so probably missing out on my mailbox filling up with all kinds of crap.

Well, I'm halfway through a two-week business trip again, so missing out on my mail, but here's some stuff worth noting:

- got 10k TY points from Citi (haven't redeemed yet)
- got 10k points from Chase to redeem for $100 cash (haven't received check yet)
- I probably have a boatload of BT checks sitting in my mailbox at home awaiting deposit
- Finally got full access to my Citibank account, it was a titanic pain in the butt getting things authorized with the phone monkies, don't open an account over the phone if you can help it.
- opened up a Citi e-savings (took a whopping 30 seconds)
- I found out that the limit for the BofA Efectiva card was $5500. How did I learn this? Because that's the size of the BT that hit my other card. The nice milestone here is that it puts me over the $120k total CL, which is three times what I started with.
- Learned that with Chase, if you only charge 1 cent on a card in a month, they just "forgive" the charge and have a credit adjustment on the statement day so you don't have to pay. Probably because it costs them more to process an ACH payment than they'd get.

I think I've set up a convoluted, but possibly useful, bifurcation of my finances as a result of all the new accounts. Here are the two "payment chains"

0% cards with balances -> MBNA Jets card (via billpay) -> Fidelity account
Regular spending cards -> MBNA Fidelity card (also a regular spender) -> my regular Schwab account

The Fidelity account will be exclusively funded with BT's. I'll also use that account to fake reocurring direct deposits into BofA and Citibank accounts, as well as cycle the money back out. Therefore, I'm building my own shadow economy, which should hopefully make it easier to sort out my regular transactions from my crazy FW-induced transactions.

Oh yeah, and perhaps the most fun is the result from when I checked my FAKOs:

TU 769, Exp 699, Equ 640

That's like a 100-point drop. Boo. Yah. The only reason the TU score is higher is because it's not yet showing the Wells, BofA, or Chase cards with the big balances. When it does, I assume it will follow the others into the crapper.

Oh my! I was getting dizzy re-reading your escapades. LOL And to think I am in the middle of my own, although I was not as brave as you. Still trying to decide the utilization % which I want to stick with for my BT.

Do you have a spreadsheet to keep track of all the $ floating in and out and funding those bank accounts? That is one dimension I didn't include as there weren't any offers juicy enough for me to jump on.

Also, my latest score is now at 757 and that is only with $1730 sitting at 0%. I can't imagine what it will drop to when I bump it over $20-$30K, which yes, I know is peanuts for some of you. Call me conservative.


markkundinger said:

0% cards with balances -> MBNA Jets card (via billpay) -> Fidelity account
Regular spending cards -> MBNA Fidelity card (also a regular spender) -> my regular Schwab account

<snip>

TU 769, Exp 699, Equ 640

tashayar said:Do you have a spreadsheet to keep track of all the $ floating in and out and funding those bank accounts? That is one dimension I didn't include as there weren't any offers juicy enough for me to jump on.

tasha, I have a copy of MS Money, that does a pretty good job of aggregating things (although trying to update 20 accounts at once often means a few fail). Plus, Fidelity has their Full View (outsourced Yodlee) which is pretty handy (Netbank offers it too). However, I'm not budgeted to the hilt with my cash, so I could have extra sloshing around in various places without it clobbering me (although I did go below a minimum balance when a rent check cleared early). Despite those tools, it's still a decent amount of wrangling work, I'm working in getting money back into my real accounts from BofA and Citibank and Netbank. Probably by the time I'm done I'll be netting about $2/hr for my labor

scott, I've never needed to verify any income for a card personally, but I'm pretty sure both my income and CL's are still at the "chump" level to the banks. I strongly doubt they ever verify income without contacting you directly. From other threads, that seems to be two cases:

1) You're trying to get a truly absurd credit limit (often over 50k).
2) AMEX does a financial review.

That being said, I can see how Chase might limit a new offer to 25k, you probably hit the cap. If you really wanted a bigger CL, you could probably talk to a rep, then they might need to verify income, or you might be able to impress them with the amount of cash you have sloshing around in the bank.

mbaker, thanks for the offer of "protection". I hear that Italian-American Legitimate Businessmen Credit Union is offering appealing rates on lines of credit, I was thinking of signing up for that...

markkundinger said:TU 769, Exp 699, Equ 640
TU dropped to 717 as it's now showing the Wells Fargo and Chase balances.

Whew. Got back in town after two weeks, and my mailbox was full. So full in fact, that the mailman took everything and make me pick it up at the post office.

The Bad: RBS sent a denial saying they still couldn't verify address after the extra material I faxed them. I guess I'll give them a call on Monday, but this looks like a card I may have to give up on.

The Good
- Got $75 and $75 on the two NetBank accounts (only 33 days after funding)
- Got the $100 check from the Chase Rewards Plus Mastercard
- Got $50 cardoffers check for the Advanta card (my first one from the site)
- Received a combination of credit balance refund and BT checks totaling around $47k for deposit into my accounts.
- Got some 12mo 0% zero-fee BT checks for the CitiBusiness card. This one didn't have any 0% deal when it was opened, so this is pretty cool, because they checks allow me to get the card "into play". Called CSR to activate it, she said it would be used for anything except paying a Citi card, or depositing in account. I think I may need to work out a double-launder of using the check to pay on card, which does a BT to a Citi card, which then gets the money refunded back. I still need to figure out the best way to do that.

Anyway, barring future offers from banks, I have the entire initial allotment of 0% credit line in play now. It's mainly an issue of making sure that maintenance mode works.

And finally, the credit scores: Tu 703, Exp 692, Equ 640. I still am going to try to get that TU score under 700.

From what others have posted, cardoffers can be kinda slow. I am waiting on a check after doing an AOR about a month ago....

I called up RBS, and my application is still hung up. I think there were two reasons:

1) When I faxed them some supporting residence information, I think I had the paper backwards in the machine.
2) They have my last name wrong on the application (downside of having a human take down an app over the phone)

Now I need to wait for my gas bill to see if I can get it straightened out.

tuphat said:FWIW -- You may not find the RBS card very useful for BTs. My recollection is that BT fee is not capped at max dollar amount, rendering it pretty much worthless.

I got an offer in the mail from them in the last few days. I think it was no fee if BT done with application. It was something decent at least since I considered it.