Comments on: Time to Put the New Card into Business

By: Citi Removes Caps on Balance Transfer Fees - The Sun’s Financial Diary - Accumulating wealth is like building The Great Wall, one brick at a time

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:41:14 +0000

[...] years, and all of them were fee-free: I paid absolutely nothing for the free loans, including the latest BT from Citi PremierPass card. Though the card carrier says there’s a maximum fee of $250, my statement tells me [...]

By: The Sun

The Sun — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 04:32:52 +0000

Actually, I already made the first purchase and paid off the balance before asking for a balance transfer check. You are right about that any payment will go to the low interest balance first and I learned it from a lesson a couple of years ago when I was doing a balance transfer with Citi. At that time I used the card to make a purchase but somehow the delivery was delayed for very long time and I forgot about it. Then I paid all the balance on the card and asked for a balance transfer. Shortly after that, my purchase was delivered and the charge was put on my card when the product was shipped, but it was after I made the transfer. So I had to pay back the money I borrowed plus a $75 balance transfer to minimize the interests. Since then, I always make sure I don’t have any outstanding balance when I transfer balance.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:07:27 +0000

Please keep us posted after you made the first purchase. Many card company let you pay off the lowerest interest balance first. Therefor, if you made a purchase $100, after $18000 zero interest transfer, and you want to pay off the $100 when the first bill came. You will find your $100 balance at 15% or higher interest are there, only your transferred balance amount is smaller.

If this trap is not there, you led us to the gold.

By: The Sun

The Sun — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:10:00 +0000

First of all, BT stands for balance transfer. The card I applied (actually, many other cards as well) offered a 0% interest rate balance transfer for 12 months, meaning that I can use the money (up to the credit limit) to pay off any other balances, if any, carrying higher interest rates without paying any interests from the new card. This effectively transfers balance from other cards to the new card. This is quite common for new card offers, though some times there are other conditions such as a certain amount of fees for the transfer.

However, if I don’t have any balances (not necessarily credit card balances), I can still get the interest free money by asking Citi to send me a check payable to me so I can deposit the check into my account and save it for 12 months to earn some interests. Sometimes, the credit card company, for example Chase, can send me a blank check so I can just write myself a check with the amount I want, but Citi insists to send me a check with my name printed on it and the amount specified. For other credit card company such as Discover, they don’t send check and the 0% balance transfer can only be used to pay off balances. In this case, I just ask Discover to send the amount I want to my Citi cards, though the cards may not have any balance on them, then use Citi’s online tool to request a refund check and collect the cash.

In my opinion, 0% balance transfer is OK to play, but have to be responsible of paying the minimum monthly payment. If miss or late once, the whole promotion will be terminated immediately and the regular interest rate will knick in.

By: kay

kay — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:33:23 +0000

Forgive me,
I am pretty new here and just learning. So are you saying that you received this card so that you can write your self a check for 18,000 and pay it back within a year? I guess it would help if I knew what BT meant..Hope you have time to explain that one…
thanks