Hi all: I just discovered this place and I am amazed. This is a gold mine of great info! But right now to learn everything I need too much time, and time is what I don't have... Okay here is the situation: I am a new college grad, and I have a amazon.com bankone Visa card for about 4 years now. My recent move to a new area to live and work on my own has caused my CC bill to be greater then usual, (around $1400) I have always paid my bill in full on time, but this time I simply don't have the money to pay it in full on time... following the advice on this board i called the bank and asked if they could extend my deadline for a couple days, since a day after the deadline (july 1st) i will get my first pay check... Unfortunate, the CSR told me that they cannot do that, but they could change the billing cycle date for future bills... So now i am faced with the possibility of carrying a balance for the first time... Is this bad? I know there is a huge interest charge, but I plan to pay it off as soon as I get paid, so how much interest is going to accumlate in 2 or 3 days? Also will having a balance affect my credit rating? (I should also check on how to get my credit rating too... it is just sad that I have to ask a car dealer to tell me what my rating was, around 720 i was told) Anyways, I know that there are probabally plenty of info on this board regarding to my question, but I really need to send the money out soon so i don't miss the deadline... Please help. I also considered getting another CC with 0% APR (since I only have one CC I figure I need another one anyways) but most of them won't accept Balance transfer for several weeks And finding the right card is also hard (esp one that has good cash rebate...) Finally, does every CC charges a fee for currency conversion? Currently, I think my card will charge me like 2% of the purchase price if I order something overseas in foreign currency... again so sorry for the stupid questions but I am so new to all this I just don't know where to start... thanks so much
thank you so much. I don't think I was very clear in my first post... let me clarify: the deadline for the bill is on 7/1 and I won't get paid until 7/3... the APR is 8.9% and the dail periodic rate is .02439% what ever that means... So if I pay off part of the bill is actually not good since it will make my balance go below 20% of the credit limit? Any recommandations on the next CC? I know there are many sites on CC offers, but I thought I ask here and see if there are some catch that I need to worry about for different cards... thanks for your understanding and help
again so sorry for the stupid questions but I am so new to all this I just don't know where to start... xiaowugui This is where you start NEW MEMBERS READ THIS. http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?s=&postid=410243#post410243 ************************************************************
The daily periodic rate is the rate of interest which is charged every day. Now, for the full $1400, you would take 1400 * 0.02439% ($0.35 a day if I am doing it right. I did it in both Calculator & Excel and they double checked each other.) Do you have enough to pay the min. balance now? If you at least pay the min. balance before the deadline, at least you won't get a late charge, *AND* a 0-30 DAYS LATE on your credit report for the trade line. Then when you get the pay check, send the payment for the remainder of the balance. It may be a little bit off with the daily percentage rate, but you'll be able to take care of that on the next payment. You really don't want to risk the check going through a day before your pay is deposited, and getting returned check fees, plus other fees. But $0.35 a day is not an amount to get worried about, especially for under a week.
You don't want to get worried about the utilization rate, and how it'll affect your score for this one payment. The utilization rate is the snapshot of the last time your accounts were updated, the next time the account is updated, they'll be figured out all over again. The utilization isn't averaged or anything, its just the % of the limit that your balance is on the date that it was last reported. When your next statement comes around, the utilization rate will go right back down (as your usage goes back down to its normal level). Your score may be a little lower for this one month, but it'll come right back to normal. The specific percentage that is good or bad can change depending on the your limit everything is variable, on a super-high card 20% may be ideal, on a lower card 50% may be fine. As long as you avoid any negative marks from going late, it'll be fine.
