lhendricks92's AOR v2.0 and subsequent rolling thunder...

rufruf44 said: I thought BankAtlantic has the 20K limit per BT. Did they lift that restriction or you manage to make them waive the fee like last time?

Seems like they've lifted the restriction. Did a 43K BT in one shot for my wife, and I just completed the aforementioned 23K transfer for myself. I did these over the phone using the number on the back of the card.

r0man said: lhendricks92 said: Seems like they've lifted the restriction. Did a 43K BT in one shot for my wife, and I just completed the aforementioned 23K transfer for myself. I did these over the phone using the number on the back of the card.
Very nice, well done. I'm tempted to follow your lead. You called BankAtlantic and they had no problem reallocating your Juniper National Parks?

no, i called the barclays credit dept first. look for the number in the credit card issuer faq thread.

called bankAtlantic the next day to do the BT.

754 really isn't that low at all.

althes said: So bank atlantic doesnt report to personal.

not yet, at least.

getting it joint would be nice but with AMEX these days you never know.

so much for not rate chasing. since i started this thread, i've opened 2 BofA money market accounts, bought and sold several muni resets from Fidelity, and now i've locked up $310K in the SECU CD deal.

the good news is my wife is starting to accept my FWF insanity.

DjPiLL said: Damm I wished I could have gotten into the SECU deal. I tried to join but it took them too long to get the application out to me and I didn't have my AOR money yet. But that's ok i'll still join them and hope for a deal next year. I'll be ready.

rumor has it there will be another 5-6 month CD deal starting 5-6 months from now. keep your eyes open.

Well regardless... I am sure once the next deal comes up I will be ready.

SOONERFANS said: Does anyone know how to set up Bank Atlantic Biz card up in Yodlee?

it's requested. you can bump jairocon's thread here on yodlee's forum. I think you have to register to get to the link.

Cheers and congratulations for your victorious battle with Chase! Thanks for the good info. That is an important point to watch out for.

Venturion said: Your Chase issue is why I have yet to mess with changing closing dates. If you don't use billpay, don't have cash flow issues, aren't concerned about a few extra days float, and tracking separate dates isn't an inconvenience, are there other reasons to change the date? I recognize there are a lot of assumptions in that last sentence and feel free to challenge any of them. Thanks!The only reason I can think of changing them are for the reasons you already rulled out. Originally, I was trying (even started a thread) to figure out which issuers moved back the BT due date if you change your billing date. What I learned is that CSR's are idiots who will tell you 3 different dates for when your BT due date is once you start messing with it. I'm typically pretty adament about these things, but I gave up and said forget it.

The only reasons I see to keep all your bills due on the same day (which probalby would be nice, but the benefit of this does not warrant moving 82 card dates for me), and trying to get a little longer float. No one doing an AOR shoudl allow themselves to have cash flow problems. If they do, they have other major things to worry about.

Now that I’m down to 0 inqs from TU and EQ, I’m considering a midstream, 6 month, mostly business A0R. I’m also trying to decide what to do with 40K of new personal CL with BofA.

First, here’s a current snapshot of my debt situation.

Paid off the big USAA balance from last year’s BT, so now I have 4 reporting balances:

Card            Balance / Credit Limit 
BofA NFL        27K     / 74K (after CLIs and reallocation)
Principal Visa  5K      / 15K (early on I accidentally made two $2500 payments.  Oops.)
Nat City        4.5K    / 10K (0% ends in December)
WAMU ESPN       3K      / 7.5K (0% ends in December)

Type       Name                           Notes
Business---Discover Business--------------0% 18 months; $75 fee
Business---pnc biz phone app--------------1.866.354.3246 - try to get BT offer
Business---BB&T---------------------------0% for 6 months, no BT fee - phone app 1-800-397-1253
Business---Wachoiva Visa Business---------0%; 6 months; no bt fee (phone app) (800) 566-3862
Business---Compass Bank Visa Biz Classic--0% for 6 months $75 fee - fax app to 205-297-3158
Business---Vectra Bank--------------------0% for 6 months; BT fee? Phone app 888-758-5349
Business---AMEX Business Gold-------------$60 cardselection.com, 25K Mem Rewards

Personal---Nat City LifeSprings-----------0% 12 months no fee
Personal---US Bank phone app--------------888-777-4444, 0% for 12 months no fee BT on app ext. 8119
Personal---Compass Bank-------------------0% 12 months; $75 fee; phone app: 1-800-COMPASS
Personal---Citi PP Elite------------------25K TY Points - convert to save fee and move CL to citi biz

Any other suggestions?

Now, as far as what to do with BofA, I’m treading carefully in light of adverse action against Jairocon and kkerty89. It seems BofA has become twitchy about big increases in debt and lots of new open accounts. As a preemptive move, I decided to close 4 relatively new, puny limit cards. Yes, heresy, but I felt the risk/reward tradeoff warranted this move.

OK, so what should I do? I still have 8 months left on 0% BTs on my BofA NFL card (EDIT: with a $75 BT fee.)

Options:

1) I could take another 40K BT now, but I’d prefer not to show all of the debt during my proposed Jan A0R.
2) I could do the A0R now and take the BofA NFL BT shortly thereafter.
3) I could apply for a new no fee BT BofA card, reallocate, and use rolling maximization to hide this debt.
4) I could do nothing and just wait ‘til the Jan A0R.

I’m leaning to Option 4, but I hate losing 2 months of interest on $40K.

Thoughts?

I have a natural inclination to just waiting and doing nothing until most of the balances are paid down.

How are your credit scores looking right now? That's the big determinant in what you will be able to get away with, app-wise.

Advancing the rest of the $40k would get you over $1000. Not too shabby. And if you're going to be paying off the BofA Business cards in a few months, you could rationalize it's not much of a net increase.

glxpass said: What's the downside (besides inquiries) of launching a business AOR,
Potential opportunity cost.

If the FICO is still impaired, and if the personal balances are too high, then the business apps might get rejected or accepted with small credit limits. While if he waited, then there might be full-strength credit limits.

It's all guesswork though.

Thanks for the responses.

If I was going to launch the mini A0R now, I would payoff the tiny WAMU and NatCity balances immediately.

EQ FICO is 769, and that's without the $0 USAA balance reporting. I'm not worried about my scores, but what about the "too many accounts in the past 6 months" issue? Lenders often go beyond FICO when evaluating applications, and this is a common reason for rejection. And, I'm going after some smaller players who are more likely to be spooked by new-ish accounts and inquiries (in the case of EX.)

Do you guys have any additions/suggestions for my list of apps?

launched a mini (almost micro) 6 month A0R last week. didn't apply for any personal BT cards because I wanted to minimize hits to my personal score. i might be applying for a new job very soon. EQ FICO was at 800 when i started.

activities...

BB&T biz card, approved $15K. 0% for 6 months no fee BT. app required a branch visit.
Wachovia biz card, deferred. 0% for 6 months no fee BT. app also required a branch visit.
Discover Biz, deferred. see here what happened with this one.
Citi Cash Returns, approved $7500. 5% cash.back for 3 months. citi, prepare for some serious abuse.
Citi Hilton Visa Sig, approved $15K. applied to get the CL as this card seems to have its own silo of credit. i plan to reallocate to the Cash Returns.
PenFed Visa, received CLI to $50K from $20K. Took a hard pull, but definitely worth it.

also, took another $40K BT on my BofA NFL card to bring util up to 89%. still debating how long i'll leave the util that high. i only have one other card with a balance, and that's only 4k on the Principal card with a 15k CL.

not sure when the change was made, but i was prompted by this post. phone call took about 3 minutes, and the request was approved within about an hour.

markkundinger said:
I think it's worth reiterating that:

a) You did a great job of pushing the utilizatio on the business side, having only two personal cards with outstanding BTs (NFL and Principal).

b) The advantages of that technique are demonstrated by your FICO, which is now slightly higher than when you started the AOR.

mark, thanks for the encouraging words. i was a little surprised when Discover grilled me about utilization on my business lines, so it's not quite the offshore black hole of debt I had been envisioning. can't wait to see what's actually on my EQ biz report.

as far as my FICO, the biggest help was getting that huge CLI on my NFL card to $74K, and i just got that huge CLI on my largely unused PenFed card. if i wasn't expecting a personnel department to be looking at my report soon, i would add a couple more personal BT cards. probably us bank baylor and nat city life springs. BTW, has anyone successfully reallocated nat city CL to the life springs card?

in lieu of applying for more cards, i decided to do a round of CLI requests.

Juniper - Called them to increase the limit on my SeaMiles card - it's currently $500. I have $44K CL on my BankAtlantic card, but I figured it was worth a shot. They told me to fax paystubs or latest tax return. No thanks.

Nat City - Per the advice of MikeR397, I decided to dangle another BT to get the CLI. Took a hard pull (TU, thankfully), but I got an increase from $10K to $25K. Then I passed on the BT. Best they could do was 1.9% for 6 months. I don't want any more debt reporting at the moment, so this offer was less than compelling.

My other candidate for CLI is the Infibank/FNBO Principal Visa. Any experiences with Infibank CLIs?

lhendricks92 said: not sure when the change was made, but i was prompted by this post. phone call took about 3 minutes, and the request was approved within about an hour.

Now you've got me interested in the Penfed card. I currently have a couple small CDs with them but I've never had any of their credit products. (I kept thinking they would send me offers but they never have)

Do you remember which report they ran? I remember they ran a hard when I opened a savings account with them-- I think it was EX.

This was a personal card, right?