STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

bumblebee · Coach

credit card question

Deuce · Dooney & Bourke

first thing to do is to call the higher rate card and ask for a lower rate and you are looking at other cards with a lower rate. I think it is bad to have a lot of cards xfering around. If it is just 2 cards I don't think so. I have been told doing the balance xfer thing can look bad but I don't know if it applies to your situation with only 2 cards.

Maybe none of my business i know but I have a lot of experience with cc debt. Quit now while it is manageable. pretty soon you will look up and all of the sudden i was 15k in debt. cut them up and close them. If you like the miles figure out haw much you can spend per month on your card and pay it off monthly. Now I will leave you alone I just hate to see someone else go through what I did with those damn cards. and all the while I thought I had it in controll and all of the sudden I didn't. Sorry to lecture you

bumblebee · Coach

thanks for your concern--you are right on and that's totally my plan. i had a bunch of credit card debt when i finished college, and i worked really hard to pay it all off when i was making much less money. but now i have a chunk of debt again (mostly because of all the traveling i did this year) so it's my goal to get it all paid off again and go back to doing exactly what you said: using the miles card up to a certain level each month and then paying it off each month.

i was just hoping i could save myself a little of the interest by transferring the balance to a lower-rate card that i already have, but i plan to pay it off in full either way.

Farrah · Marc Jacobs

According to the goddess Suze it does not negatively affect your credit when you do balance transfers to lower rate cards. She actually encourages it.

Lilykind · Hermes

Farrah wrote:

According to the goddess Suze it does not negatively affect your credit when you do balance transfers to lower rate cards. She actually encourages it.

Do you know if she says anything about transferring to cards that are interest free for an introductory period? Right now I have a little bit of debt to pay off, but my now interest free card stops being interest free as of next month. I guess I need to look for a new credit card with 0% intro APR. I was too afraid to ask because I felt silly and stupid too.

I Suze...I have a newfound appreciation for her now that I have an income, albeit a pathetic one.

Farrah · Marc Jacobs

Lilykind wrote:

Farrah wrote: According to the goddess Suze it does not negatively affect your credit when you do balance transfers to lower rate cards. She actually encourages it. Do you know if she says anything about transferring to cards that are interest free for an introductory period? Right now I have a little bit of debt to pay off, but my now interest free card stops being interest free as of next month. I guess I need to look for a new credit card with 0% intro APR. I was too afraid to ask because I felt silly and stupid too. I Suze...I have a newfound appreciation for her now that I have an income, albeit a pathetic one.

She encourages that as well, but only if you plan to pay off the card before the no interest rate is up. She does not encourage continuously opening up new no interest cards just to transfer balances. That reflects negatively on your credit report.

bumblebee · Coach

farrah, so what you are saying is that if i transfer balances between the two cards i already have open, that won't affect my credit, but if i continuously open new cards to get the low or 0% balance offers, then that would? i think that was what you were saying.

sorry i am so slow to grasp these concepts.

Farrah · Marc Jacobs

bumblebee wrote:

farrah, so what you are saying is that if i transfer balances between the two cards i already have open, that won't affect my credit, but if i continuously open new cards to get the low or 0% balance offers, then that would? i think that was what you were saying. sorry i am so slow to grasp these concepts.

You got it.

The current cards do not report the fact that they are paying these balances to the credit bureaus. It does get reported every time you apply for and/or open a new card and it looks bad to have a lot of open revolving cards or short term cards on your report. You want to have longevity with your cards. She suggests keeping the one that you have had the longest even if it has a terrible interest rate and cutting it up and never using it. Just to have that longevity on there, it increases your FICO score quite a bit.