Keep total balance transfer to 30% utilization of card, or max out transfer promo?
Hello all. I am working on clearing some CC debt. I'm carrying about 17.5k on a card that's recently gone up to about 21% interest.
I won't bore anyone with my long story, but briefly, I was sick for over three years after Covid and am just now able to work again in my own business. In that time my wife had to support us, as I was basically disabled to the point where my health was all I could focus on. Savings ran out, etc. I also support an elderly parent, so the debt grew in that time with medical bills and I admit that to not stress my wife out even more, I put car repairs, home repairs, and things that came up on my card. I was keeping up with paying 2x the min but the interest raising just killed me. It went from about 11% to now 21% or so. I would make big dents before and then something would pop up again and I'd go backwards again. Now I literally don't spend on the card and with my payment each month, the balance just stays where it is.
I made some changes to our budget this month, where I now have about 1k a month to tackle the amount. To save some interest, I opened a new CC that has a 0% APR on Balance Transfers for 12 months, with a 3% transfer fee. They are allowing me to transfer up to $5,500.00 of debt to the card. However, that would essentially take the utilization of this new account to over 73%. I'm not sure if that's wise.
Would it be better to just transfer over enough debt to make some interest savings valuable, say $2,500.00-$3,000, so the card utilization remains reasonable? Or is it best to just max out what they are offering to lend me?
I have some assets to sell so my plan is to move over some balance, and then what's left on the high interest card to make a series of larger payments as I sell some investments over the next few months, etc. as well as work this extra 1k towards what's left.
The card I obtained is a credit card my wife already has that I am an authorized user on. I just opened up my own for the transfer offer and hopefully done responsibly later, it will be a useful card. We've had a long history and do not carry any balance on that card. I did this because I can immediately sock drawer that card and only use it for this transfer offer and nothing else. It's already locked in my safe.
I'd be thankful for any advice?
Posted Nov 1, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC