lhendricks92 said:I've been able to get FIA to report my true CL on the Fidelity card, although it does seem to be YMMV.

My Fidelity card shows as flexible spending credit card, instead of just credit card, in the TrueCredit. It only shows highest balance, not CL.

edit: only TransUnion shows flexible spending cc. Experian shows CC.
I dispute from Equifax once before to request it put CL in my credit report. This card has been totally removed from my Equifax report ever since.

lhendricks92 said:jairocon said:#2. BTs are treated as purchases - so there is actually a grace period and if you pay them off before the statement cuts then no interest is charged (or so I read on other threads).

I see, so they're high maintenance BTs, in that you have to request and pay them off every month (and the purchase promo rate doesn't apply). Thanks for the explanation.
There's a huge mitigating factor: most of the checks can go straight into checking or savings, with no need to make it look like a BT. You have to make a payment every month anyway; the trick here is to pay the full balance rather than the min as with other cards. The only additional effort is to deposit $17,800 several times a year. CapOne has been very good to me.

The Dave Hanson twist: deposit the check at the beginning of the statement period and pay it off just before the end of the statement period. Result: the balance never reports so the high utilization never gets a chance to ding your credit score. (I think he's often on the lookout for mortgage details for investment property, so he has a much higher incentive to maximize his credit score than most of us.) Here you could probably deposit the full $20K.

lhendricks92 said:Now, what's the best way to get a high CL with CapOne?
A $19,900 BT requested with the app. Let's move any additional CapOne discussion to another thread (which I should have done last time...).

Still waiting to hear from: Wells Fargo and M&T

I'm trying to thread carefully w/ BofA - here's the dilemma:

Biz: $25k CL avail for 0%/9mo no fee BT (I'll have to fight with them about the no fee part)
MBNA (personal): $31.3k CL avail - that I use to the max and pay off b4 statement every month
Fidelity: $10k CL avail - that I could use to the max and pay off b4 statement every month
BofA personal: $5.5k CL has 0%/12mo no fee offer
NFL: $2k CL avail

Three scenarios could happen:

#1 BofA lets me re-allocate from personal to Biz:
$25k (original biz) + $9.5k (fidelity) + $5k (personal) +$1.5k nfl = $41k biz
I'd take $41k (or slightly less) BT for 9 mo from biz, leaving $500 CL on all personal bofa cards, except MBNA, which I wouldn't touch.
- but how hard is it to move the bofa biz lines back to personal once the 9mo BT is done?

#2 BofA doesn't let me re-allocate from personal to Biz:
$25k BT from biz for 9 mo
then pool all personals except mbna together for a $16k CL and 89% BT for 12 mo, leaving $500 CL on fidelity and nfl, and not touching MBNA

#3 BofA doesn't let me re-allocate from personal to Biz:
$25k BT from biz for 9 mo
then pool all personals (even mbna) to get $46.8k CL and do 89% BT for 12 mo, leaving $500 CL everywhere else

The thing is - I want to hide as much debt from CR as possible but keep high credit lines reporting. MBNA allows me to keep an old line (7 yrs) reporting $0 balance on a $31.3k CL while using it to the max for billpay and paying it off. Best scenario would be #1, worst would be probably #3. I could try and move all the personal CLs to MBNA and forget about the BT and just use the Billpay, but I'm not sure how long will that one last.

I guess I'll see what they say about the re-allocation.

markkundinger said:From a sheer profit-maximization perspective, you'd want as much debt at 0% for as long as possible. So I wouldn't recommend reallocating to the Biz card, because the BT is only 9mo. In fact, I'd reallocate from the biz card to the card with the 12mo 0% offer. Even on the personal side, if you gave up the MBNA-billpay-to-bank-account shenanigans, simply transferred the CL over to the 0% deal, that would yield more profit because you don't have to deal with the few days of dead time around each statement cycle.

Of course, doing all of this would probably trash your credit score (and maybe set off alarms at BofA).That's the thing - in AOR1.0 mode I would probably push as much CL into the longest 0% BT card and take it to 89%. In AOR2.0 mode - I'm feeling a bit more experimental. With 37+ cards (lost count) open, I'm going to have to play a bit more defensive game to protect the accounts and credit lines and most likely will have to push some consolidations through. I think I'll have plenty of personal debt showing when I get done with all the BTs... so anything I could hide would be to my benefit.

as far as billpay vs. BT, that's an interesting dilemma. do we have any evidence that billpay is going away? if not, i might be tempted to forgo the BT and just max out billpay. hiding debt is a good thing.

Quick update: M&T approved with $7.5k CL! Unbelievable! This was over a week after the AOR when I applied for it, and it was still approved. I'm glad that I did. Thanks kherty and lhendricks for providing useful info so that I could come back and re-do the application.

BofA Biz is now showing a CL of $34.5k! $9.5k was successfully moved from personal FIA Fidelity. I still haven't decided what's the best option for BofA yet.

jairocon said:Quick update: M&T approved with $7.5k CL! Unbelievable! This was over a week after the AOR when I applied for it, and it was still approved. I'm glad that I did. Thanks kherty and lhendricks for providing useful info so that I could come back and re-do the application.

BofA Biz is now showing a CL of $34.5k! $9.5k was successfully moved from personal FIA Fidelity. I still haven't decided what's the best option for BofA yet.

Glad you got that. I'm overdue for an update, just waiting for some BT's (i.e. principal and FNBO) to actually post before updating.

lhendricks92 said:any idea if you can move BofA biz credit BACK to personal?I'm not sure - I'm contemplating really what to do - but the thing is - I could get that biz line to almost $70k and take the BT at close to 100%. It would be nice to hide it for those 9 months (now a bit less) and then just move the CL to personal and take it for the remaining 3 months on personal. I have a feeling that the FIA CSRs would be able to pull off a CL realloc from biz to personal. I'm going to post a question in the realloc thread when I find it (edit: found it).

jairocon said:Quick update: M&T approved with $7.5k CL! Unbelievable! This was over a week after the AOR when I applied for it, and it was still approved.
I'm not surprised at all. Just look at the threads; lots of people get cards they apply for AFTER the big day. Based on my pre-AOR "card juggling" days plus recent AOR experience, the most important part of an "app spree" is to apply for cards before the new BT BALANCES report.

Note that in some cases the score can go UP when new cards report at $0 balance. (Perhaps only for people with long credit history, so the avg age doesn't hurt as much.)

Are there secondary benefits to "all on one day" vs. "all within a month or so"? Probably. But it's not a big deal. (As always: contrary evidence welcome.)