To join the crowd and reiterate what everyone else has already said:

Thanks for the contribution, this was a very comprehensive well laid out thread.

Just finished reading the entire thread. Very well done, OP! It's going to help others make money too, and that's a great plus. Congratulations on your post--and on your success!

DaveHanson said:
Do you recall seeing another thread I might have missed where 70% had a special significance?

This 70% was talked about in a few earlier threads that seem to defy my searches in finding them. It was proposed that 70% and under was the sweet spot for utilization. For me it was confusing to see the 70% and 50% numbers floating around while planning my app-o-rama. Thanks for the clarification, and your "High Credit Score" thread.

cilinagonason said:Is this a one time thing? can you repeat all of these next year? with all those credit card accounts opened.

You can apply for new 0% cards next year, then move some of your existing credit lines over. Now you can do even larger BTs...

sammy1224 said:Nummerkins said:cilinagonason said:Is this a one time thing? can you repeat all of these next year? with all those credit card accounts opened.

You can apply for new 0% cards next year, then move some of your existing credit lines over. Now you can do even larger BTs...


Does anyone believe that financial institutions will eventually wise-up and introduce barriers to prevent these types of schemes?

I would think the actual number of people that do this 0% stuff is quite small. Plus, there are always enough customers who don't pay off their 0% transfers to cover those that do.

WWWestonC said:I have an AOR rookie type question. I've been reading through FWF trying to see what this AOR concept is all about, and this thread basically summed it up for me. However I'm wondering what are the downsides to this. The OP said that he had problems with Chase and I also noticed there was a large credit score drop after the AOR. Are those the only downsides, you can realize great profits from high-interest bank accounts, however you lose about 100 off your credit score and could be questioned by the CC companies?

Thanks for the help!


If you make a late payments, the whole thing can fall apart at the seams and actually end up costing you quite a bit. All at the same time, you will lose whatever profit you would have made otherwise. To summarize, you really need to know what you're doing. Any little mistake and/or slip-up, and you're done.

Tempest25 said: [QI know most experienced in this process aim to keep their balances under 50%. Does that really matter at the beginning of a yearly BT cycle? Shouldn't that be only something to concern yourself with when you're about to close out one 'cycle' to begin the next? Or does carrying the larger than 50% balance create a longer lasting impact on your credit history that's not easily recovered from once the cards are paid down?


Credit card issuers can decide to review your account and terminate your 0% offers at any point in the BT cycle. The 50% mark is not just so you can do anotehr AoR, it is partly to avoid adverse reactions. There have been several high profile cases on this forum where the person was post AoR by a few months, had not applied for any credit cards for a while, and had numerous accounts closed and/or reduced. You do not have to be late on payments for this to happen, simply having high utilization is enough to cause this. That being said, I believe CC issuers can only see your instantaneous balances on their credit cards and can see your statement balances on other issuers' credit cards. Threfore I like to take out something like 95-97% of my credit limit and pay off enough to get to 49.9% just before my FIRST statement closes.

Tempest25 said:Thank you for the response. I've seen this mentioned in the past, so I'll definitely keep that in mind when proceeding.
FWFBooster said: Threfore I like to take out something like 95-97% of my credit limit and pay off enough to get to 49.9% just before my FIRST statement closes.
Regarding the quote above: Do you take out the high percentage at first to allow you to put an extremely large balance transfer amount on your application to boost your CL as much as possible or is this part of a plan to 'float' money between cards/statements?

Well I have been doing it for the float but my next AoR I intend to be bold enough to ask for my current max credit line equivalent as a BT on every app. Just on float alone....I was going to set up bill payment anyway so the only real extra time is the time it takes to make the one extra payment (2 minutes?). So even for a modest 10K credit limit say I do 97% (sometimes I get paranoid that they may not really waive the 3% fee, I get hit with over-the-limit, and my house of cards comes down) that marginal float would be $4,700. I'm too lazy to do exact math but at today's rates that would be about a $17 bonus interest for 2 minutes of work. This is probably silly but since I pay it off before the first statement I see it as very low risk and like I said somewhere else...this is a game to me and I'm always trying to set my personal high score

Steevy,
Great post. I never thought that AOR can be this profitable, when I read other posts, I was very confused and threw my plan out thinking not for me.

Anyway, How much did you actually spent to do this AOR, i.e fees etc. and each time you applied for CC was there a hard hit on your credit history?

thanks for a great thread.

Hi all...Thanks for the great feedback!

To answer more of your questions:

I avoided most BT offers that required fees (HA! To think that a company would actually want me to PAY THEM to borrow their money!). I did pay a few though. The eTrade BT had a $29 max fee and the RBS BT had a $65 max fee that I paid. I was able to get fees waived on the BT from the WaMu card ($75). I just called and asked politely! In general, if a card had a % fee that did not have a maximum, then I would pass on the BT offer.

I didn't really track the hits on my credit report. My overall goal was just getting the best offers that I could and applying for all of them in one morning to minimze the hits on my report. I guess I was kinda lazy in that respect. If it helps, I currently have 14 inquiries showing on my credit report.

Before my AOR I used one of the credit services to pull all three of my scores. If I recall correctly, I had a free promo offer through a DealPass program. Since that ran out, I have been using the free Transunion score provided by my WaMu card.

As for downsides to doing an AOR, IMO, unless you start missing payments, there aren't really any PERMANENT downsides. Your credit score is going to take a big hit, of course, so you should plan for that.

I believe that you can effectively repeat the process again after you take a little rest (pay back all the BTs and let your credit score heal a bit). If you research here on FWF, there are a few veterans that have already performed multiple AORs.

I hope that helps!