Why I Used Barclay’s Balance Transfer Offer
***Before I get into my offer and why I ultimately used it, I want to caution everyone that you should never spend money you don’t have for credit card rewards. If you are going to carry a balance you’ll almost always pay more in interest than your points are worth.***
There are so many ways to go a little overboard in this hobby. I recently committed myself to meeting the sign up bonus spend requirements for 4 cards then to top it off I realized I had only met 1/2 the 15k spend for my Hilton free night. Basically what I’m saying is that I needed to spend around 20k in a short period and to make matters worse, I was a little lower on cash than usual due to a recent large purchase.
During that same period I received a balance transfer offer from my JetBlue Plus card and this time I actually opened it. Surprisingly the offer was for up to $12k with 0% APR for 4 months and only a 1% transfer fee. Generally the fee is 3% so this was a good offer as fair as transfer offers go. No points are earned on transfers.
Conclusion
If I was to meet all my spending requirements and pay off all the balances without incurring any extra interest I needed a little extra cash. Of course I could have withdrew money from investments but then I’d be losing interest and have extra administrative steps. It was actually easy for me to justify the 1% fee for a quick 10,000 loan.
To be clear, if I didn’t think I was going to be able to pay back the 10k by the time the into APR ended I never would have done it. Barclay’s also make the process painless by allowing you to transfer the money directly into your checking account.
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A few months ago, I had a similar cash flow issue, and kept watching for convenience checks. All of the no interest convenience checks I received had at least 3% fees. I never got an offer I considered usable.
The frequency of the checks seems to have dropped dramatically from a few years ago.
I got one a few months back for 12 months 0% APR for a 1% transfer fee. I took them up on it, I make 1.9% on my Ally account, so the money is just sitting at Ally and I’m banking a small profit. If it clouded up my credit score I wouldn’t consider something like this, but there’s no reason not to play some interest rate arbitrage if they’re going to make it this easy.
Can you add a few more details. How much of your credit line are you using? Like if you have a $10,000 credit limit are you using the full 10,000 or some other number? And what impact has it had on your credit score?
I don’t have Barc anymore. Is there anyway to find out online from other banks if a balance transfer offer is available?
I would click around in your online accounts for offers, if you don’t see anything definitely call and ask what balance transfer offers are available. You should have one on most cards it just may not be a great offer
Yikes! You are falling into the trap. As soon as you say “I needed to spend around 20k in a short period” you will find a way to convince yourself to spend money on every possible thing. You should stop right away
Lol thanks for the advice, it’s under control. 20k in a few months is typical spend for me but my cash flow was a little tight so this was an easy fix.
This might be good advice for the masses, but anytime you delve down the rabbit hole of MS and churning you’ll find that many people like Bethany know how to do the dance without actually buying anything and thus keeping it profitable (otherwise she wouldn’t do it). In this case she bought herself an additional 4 months with only a 1% fee.
The Arrival card sends out these 1% offers good for 15 months pretty often, usually up to your credit limit. I’ve used them twice now.
I have used this offer on both my Jet Blue Plus and Arrival Plus several times. It is an excellent way to obtain short term cash as Bethany reports. I receive these offers all year round on both cards!
I always get it on JB but Arrival sends crappier ones and they always come on the same day. Haha