In a nutshell, I am in heavy debt reduction and low interest rate BT mode. I will begin 02 with 22% less credit card debt than I started 01 with. I've got decnt enough rates on all accounts but 2. I have 2 accounts with a combined toal of about 12K at 14.9% and neither creditor wil budge. I ordered my Equifax the first of the month and here is how it looks. FICO low 700"s. I have 18 active cc accounts with $126,500 available credit {they say that's too many}. I had balances on 11 cards per the date of the report -11/1. {Some very small}. Her's what I've done. On 10/26, I paid off one of the small balances. On 12/3, paid off a card that had a $600 balalnce. In Jan. I'll pay off 3 more cards with small balances and in May, plan to pay of another card that will have about a $1500 balance. My report had no inaccuracies's. All accounts were R1 except 2 that were " too new to rate". My question is, should I wait until March or April before applying for new credit? I ideally would like an AMEX product {Blue or an increase in my Optima Consolidator Account } to place the last of this high interest debt. I hate to close accounts for a lot of reasons. Some that have no balances, I've had since 1980 and 81. I truely believe having other lines available to me is what kept the cc companies from raising rates even higher. Any help appreciated. TIA!
First, congrats on your debt reduction! I, too, am in debt reduction mode (since June) and my goal is to be debt free, except for mortgage, by 4/01 although I've had some setbacks recently and may have to extend my goal date by as much as two or three months. I now have all my cc debt on two cards and use a third for rewards points but pay it off in full each month. I don't know how you keep track of paying 11 cc bills each month. There is a lot to be said for minimizing the bills so you can keep track of when your payments post, etc. Less stress. Also, your scores are real good and I think if you transferred or paid off some of the smaller ones onto the two main cc's you'd be in a better position of getting a good 0% BT card. I also think you should take a real good look at those you have and consider closing all but one or two retail accounts and try to get under $100,000 of available credit before applying for any new cards. Since you still have debt you should look for the longest amount of time for the 0% rather than the prestige of an AMEX for your next card. ATT Universal (now a Citi Product) has 9 months as does the Citi Plat Select. There may be others, too, that offer the 9 months or more. I think the best AMEX has is 6 months. Also make sure you get one that doesn't charge for doing BT's. Some charge as much as 3%. And beware the two cycle billing. Go for Average Daily Balance billing.
Keepmine, I agree about the number of accounts. It definitely gives you an advantage with CCC's. When they see that you have other options, they do not mess with you as much. As far as that factor lowering the score, then mine will be a little lower. I still think that some of the score factors are geared to profitability rather than creditworthiness. I have closed one account and will be closing some more, but I will have other lines to replace them. The cards I am closing are ones that would not give me favorable terms, no matter what I did.
