goldsheet said:On Personal Finance | Clever credit card strategy? Not so much
Another mainstream financial article telling us we are all crazy
It was from January 18th Philly paper, syndicated in today's Sunday paper.


EXCELLENT
I hope everyone thinking about doing an AOR/BT game reads that and is scared straight

it allows the rest of us to go under the radar

the guy in that article is investing the BT money into stocks! No way would I play that game.
I suspect that the author is a 0% BT money investor and wants to keep others out of the game

extra5 said:NEW to AOR
I find myself mid-stream with a few 0% BT Cards active, wanting more, and not knowing if I should wait or jump in.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Supposedly inquiries beyond 6 months have much less weight. If you're going to wait that long for the next AOR anyway, why not go all out now? You may get a few more rejections than if starting from scratch, but so what?

Usual caveat: figure out what level of risk and potential adverse action YOU are comfortable with. e.g. I did a large AOR (30ish cards) and one of the new accounts (FNB Omaha) was closed after a month. For me, that's just evidence that I pushed hard enough. For others, that might feel like a real setback.

Because of FatWallet and a few other nice sites I have acquired for my wife and me 39 cards in the last 12 weeks, 19 for me and 20 for her, $356,000 in new credit between us. Sign up bonuses alone, cash(credits) and prizes(miles valued @ $.016) equal $7540.00. CitiCredit Protector adds at least another $750 and could go way higher. myFICO.com score today is 726. I have three cards with $30,000+CL (yes, I learned about consolidation at FatWallet!) I believe I can consolidate two more and have
$140-150K for 0%BT and or Convience checks with no fees.

So my question is will my ability to get accepted for credit cards dry up if I do these BT's?
What does my credit utilization per card need to look like and what does my overall credit utilizaiton need to look like?

I have to say I was doing all of this with a 93% utilization on my home depot card which i made $700 from and just BT'd to Discover so my principal could earn more interest.

Last year my credit score was 804. I cancelled some old accounts, yea I know better now, My score dropped to 786. I redid our kitchen and had 93%utilizaiton on Home Depot card, then my score was 768. I applied for some credit cards and then some more and then some more. Lowest point 660 lasted less than a week when it jumped 80 to 740! It is now 728 FICO

And my other question is Chase's Default Clause. One of the entries is so ambiugous. It looks as though it gives them the right to terminate for ANY reason--

We may consider you to be in deafault if any of these occurs:

We obtain information that causes us to believe that you may be unwilling or unable to pay your debts to us or to others on time.

If we consider your account to be in default, we may close your account without notice and require you to pay your unpaid balance immediately.


Does anyone else read it that way?

I am in the process of preparing for an mini App-O-Rama in a few month. I have applied for a few credit cards during the last few month to capture some signup bonuses.This was before I was reading the threads here regarding credit cards. Still worked like a charm and I was able to capture 500$ (250$ AMEX business card, 150$ Sony card, 100$ eq. gift card for Citi Prof TY card)
After reading through the threads here i decided to:

a) Reopen an old BofA card (thanks for DaveHanson
b) Apply for CLI in my Chase Perfectcard from 10K to 15K (granted). I also asked for CLI for the Chase Business card (pending).
c) Sign up at myFICO (free trial)

This is my personal credit data:

FICO 798
AMEX Business card CL:20K (2006)
BofA Financial Rewards CL: 10K (2000)
Chase Perfectcard CL: 15K (2000)
Chase SonyCard CL: 11K (2006)
Chase Business CL:9K (2006)
HELOC 30K (2003)
Chase Prof card 9K (now cancelled)

None of these cards/accounts have a balance. However I intend to run up a balance with my Chase business card to take advantage of the 12 month 0%APR. Total annual charges on Cards are about 15-20K and i always pay them off.

Now I am considering the next steps. My idea is to get 2-3 credit card with nice BT offers to put the funds into my MM account and to get 1 or 2 more cards just for their benefits (Penfed rewards card is high on my list)To make the BT game worthwhile I would like to have substantial Credit limits (20K+).I also want to get better cards whilst keeping the number of open cards to a minimum.

The AMEX card we use a little bit for Costco purchases and such. It sure does not hurt that it has a high credit limit, but the benefits of this card are not that compelling.

The BoFA Financial Rewards card is of no use for me. I cancelled it for that reason and reopened it since i got aware that it's one of my oldest cards (thanks to DaveHanson!) and cancelling hurt my Credit score. So I simply keep it around and may use it as a source to increase my CL for other BofA cards, should I choose apply for them.

The Chase Perfectcard used to be my Workhorse, I used it for 90% of my purchases. I liked the instant rebate. However due to better benefits and rebates i now like the Chase Business card better.

The Chase Sonycard has no use for me. I intend to use it as a source card to increase my credit limit for other Chase cards and then will simply close it. I intend to try to transfer the CL to the business card (which may not work) or as a 2nd choice move it to the Perfectcard, as I hope that higher CL with existing account entice other Creditcard companies to grant my higher CL.

I am thinking of targeting Citicards (they have nice BT offers and easy transfer to checking (?). Since it going to be my first orchestrated effort to make money on BT I want to keep it as simple as possible.

I hope nobody minds my long post here. I post this to get 2nd opinions regarding my plan and suggestions how to do better. I do not think it's worthile for a newbie like me to open a new thread on this matter, so i post here.

The author makes the assumption that the $45k in debt was racked up from prior reckless purchasing (also that the card will continue to be used for regular purchases in addition to the BT).

The author does not make either of those assumptions. In fact, the statement that the man is earning 8 or 9% in investments with the $45,000 rules out reckless spending as the source of the debt.

Furthermore, the author does not say this man is investing in stocks. Only that "one generally has to take some risk - by investing in stocks or stock mutual funds, for example" to achieve those returns.

For whatever it's worth (hope it can help some of my AOR colleagues around here).
Back in Nov'06 I've pulled my free annual CR from Experian (online). I believe I went through Free Annual Credit Report (some details can be found in this thread).

Experian gave me a number to come back and look at the report again, should I need to. It sounded as they would show me the SAME (dated Nov'06) report if I were to come back (e.g., to print it out, to dispute, etc.). Here's an excerpt from the page I saw:
---------------
Report Summary
Attention NOTE: Print this page or write down your report number and date for future access. To return to your report in the near future, log on to www.experian.com/consumer and select “View your report again” or “Dispute” and then enter your report number.

Experian credit report prepared for
XXXXXXXXXXXX YYYYYYYYYYYY
Your report number is
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Report date: November XX, 2006
----------------

Well, I did dispute a couple of items with them, and then checked the report again in early Jan'06 using the number they gave me (just to make sure the requested changes were properly reflected). Well, it worked, but I also noticed that along with the changes I requested their report properly showed all the other activities that happened between Nov'06 and Jan'07 ... Well, I tried to look at my report (again, using the number they gave me back in Nov'06) today. Surprise-surprise, it worked again, and it was current as of this morning (e.g., it did show my TrueCredit pull from this morning!). This whole thing as it's been going so far amounts to a free credit report from Experian for me ...

I'm not sure what to make out of it though ... Is it just because I disputed things with them and therefore entitled for smth. like 90 days of free access to make sure they've implemented the changes? Or is it because I live in NY and there is some law that requires them to make a report available to me if there has been an activity since last pull? Is it just a technical glitch? Is it a universal loophole everyone can exploit?

Disclaimer: I was not sure if this deserves a separate thread, so I put it here to be discussed by people who pay attention to their credit scores (as most AORammers should be)

Glitch99 said:goldsheet said:On Personal Finance | Clever credit card strategy? Not so much
Another mainstream financial article telling us we are all crazy
It was from January 18th Philly paper, syndicated in today's Sunday paper.The author makes the assumption that the $45k in debt was racked up from prior reckless purchasing (also that the card will continue to be used for regular purchases in addition to the BT). If that was the case, then he makes a decent argument - that first step of financial irresponsibility would indicate he is not suited to this strategy overall. But very very few people understand you dont have to start with a balance to transfer a balance.

A good friend of mine has over 100K of margin which is currently costing him 10% (10,000 a yr) If he did the right sort of AOR he could have the money at little or no cost for approx a year at a time. Certainly worth the risk since he is in margin anyway. 10K is a huge amount of $$$. Not to mention he spends 1% management fee so he can manage his own money. I dont like his strategies but everyone has their own thing.

Rob

could it be they just reset the once a year at the 1st of every year for the free reports?

I'm not quite ready to do another big AOR for myself yet (still have 2 cards with BT on them for a couple more weeks - plus I just did AOR for my (loving) wife). However, I have 2 offers that I would really like to take advantage of.

The first is a Discover Miles 0% BT for life w/ $29 max BT fee, expires 2/15/2007. The second is a Chase 15 mo. 0% no BT fee offer (can't find any of those now, that I have seen at least), expires 2/1/2007 (yes, tomorrow)

So, any opinions on what I should do? Are these offers good enough to do right now, or should I just scrap them and wait a few months?

(as a side note, I would also like to open a penfed heloc, and wonder if it should be done at the same time)

SecondCor521 said:2. Do you advise starting my BT activity ASAP (thus maximizing the amount of time I can earn interest on OPM) or waiting the additional ~30 days until all the decisions have rolled in (thus minimizing the likelihood of adverse action by the CC companies who might see my new large balances)? I would of course wait until after my "first purchase" activity was complete in any case.
Time is money. Once the credit report has been pulled (which generally happens right away), you're safe. (Except that FNB Omaha pulls again 1 month later; see the Adverse Action thread.)