2/6/2009 Final Update
See my last post in this thread for totals.

Original Post
We don't really have threads like this on this forum, so I figured I'd start one. I just got through applying for about 30 cards, since I don't have any major financing purchases planned for the next 12 months. I would have liked to have started a little earlier before the interest rates dropped, but I hadn't wrapped up my previous (smaller) AOR.

Hopefully people will be interested - I'll post details shortly.

Summary:

Applied 1/28/2008.
At the time: credit scores/inquiries were:
TU: 761/2
EXP: 759/7
EQ: 765/8

At the time I applied, the $9k balance on my last Chase Sony card hadn't posted to my report As I mentioned, I wanted to get going while there were still some good CD rates out there to plug the funds into - otherwise I would have waited.

Stats:
Business: 3/11 Instant Approval
20k CL Instant
Personal: 9/17 Instant Approvals
77.5k CL Instant


I'll list the cards I applied for, the effect on my credit scores, and the total haul shortly I just got a mailbox stuffed with cards today, and it looks like I will be on track to get quite a bit of funding here. Stay tuned!

Update 4/2

Totals:

Business:
Approved for 12 of 13 cards
Total CL available: $164,500
Available for BT: $121,000
Utilized for BT so far: $95,250

Personal:
Approved for 13 of 18 cards
Total CL available: $118,000
Total CL after consolidation from existing cards: $196,000
Available for BT: $174,000
Utilized for BT so far: $135,150

Total in new CL: $282,500
Total CL available for BT (after consolidation): $295,000

Where I am Putting the Money
$15k Countrywide CD 6mo / 4.3%
$75k Countrywide CD 6mo / 4.05%
$25k Century Bank CD 5 mo / 4.21%
Countrywide High Yield Savings (currently: 4.05% and falling)
Vanguard Prime MMF

Signup Bonuses Received so Far
10,000 Thank You Points (TYP) from Citi Professional
15,000 TYP from Citi Business
15,000 TYP from Citi Business PremierPass
(Redemption Notes: 10,000 TYP = $100 GC)

2,500 ESPN Total Rewards Points from Washington Mutual ESPN card (= $5 GC )
500 Circle Rewards Points from Citizen's Bank Business card (good for nothing, as far as I can tell)

15,000 Hilton HHonors points
10,000 Starwood Points
20,000 Marriott Rewards Points

$320 from cardselection.com referral links

Credit Score Impact
I have a TrueCredit subscription and try to remember to pull my score every day. The x/y/z in the Notes column indicates the # of open cards reported.


Key: Date / TU Score / TU Inq / EX Score / EX Inq / EQ Score / EQ Inq / Notes
1/18/2008 763 1 743 6 765 8 18/16/16
pay off / close last sony card
1/28/2008 761 2 759 7 765 8 18/14/16, Advanta / Chase hit with hard from Biz CC apps
1/29/2008 737 13 749 12 762 9 AOR inqs start to hit
1/30/2008 760 11 749 12 754 8
1/31/2008 760 11 749 12 756 7
2/1/2008 760 11 741 12 758 6 16/16/15
2/2/2008 760 11 739 13 758 6 17/16/16
2/4/2008 754 11 739 13 758 6 18/16/16
2/5/2008 752 12 739 13 758 6
2/6/2008 752 12 739 13 758 6 18/16/16
2/8/2008 749 13 737 13 758 6 18/18/16
2/10/2008 749 13 748 13 759 6 18/19/19
2/12/2008 749 13 734 13 759 6 18/20/19
2/13/2008 745 15 734 13 759 6 18/20/20
2/15/2008 745 15 737 13 759 6 21/20/20
2/18/2008 753 15 737 13 759 6 21/21/20
2/21/2008 743 15 712 13 759 6 23/22/21 14450k from NPF hits EX
2/22/2008 743 15 697 13 756 7 23/23/21 7k Citi Home Rebate hits EX
2/24/2008 720 14 697 13 748 8 24/23/23 14450 hits TU, 14450/7k hits EQ
2/26/2008 717 14 697 13 748 8 25/23/23
2/29/2008 717 14 695 14 746 9 Inq's from DCU and AMEX
3/2/2008 705 695 746 26/23/23, Chase Plat $18825 hits TU
3/4/2008 705 14 692 14 746 9 26/24/26 Chase 18.8 hits EX
3/5/2008 705 14 682 14 691 9 26/24/24 Chase 18.8 hits EQ (finally!), TD Banknorth 11k reports to EX
3/6/2008 698 14 682 14 691 9 26/24/24 TD Banknorth 11k reports to TU
3/9/2008 698 14 682 14 688 9 26/24/24 TD Banknorth reports to EQ
3/12/2008 698 14 679 14 688 9 5.4k Citizens reports to EX
3/15/2008 688 679 688
3/18/2008 688 668 688 12k Disco hits EX
3/19/2008 688 14 668 14 681 9 25/24/24 12k Disco hits EQ
3/20/2008 670 668 681 10k WAMU on EX??
3/21/2008 670 666 681
3/23/2008 680 12 666 14 675 9 2 inq drop off of TU / 26/25/25 / 32k BoA NEA shows on EX
3/25/2008 682 11 666 14 675 9 32k on EX/EQ, not TU (verify)
3/27/2008 686 9 666 14 675 9
3/29/2008 678 8 666 14 675 9 BoA 32k hits TU
3/30/2008 681 7 666 14 675 9 B*
3/31/2008 682 6 666 14 675 9 B*
4/1/2008 684 5 666 14 675 9 B*


Business Cards Applied For/Initial CL
Advanta Small Biz 2500
Chase Plat Small Biz
Juniper/Bank Atlantic 20000
Chase Business 10000
Chase Marriott Rewards 20000
Citi Business 10000
Citi PremierPass Elite
Discover Business 7500
TD Banknorth 12000
AMEX Starwood Business 32500
GM Business 20000
Chase Amazon.com
Chase Business Green? Huh? 10000 Note this card arrived unexpectedly - I think in lieu of my Plat SB card

Personal Cards Applied For/Initial CL
Citi Professional 15000
Chase Marriott Rewards
Citi Home Rebate 7500
AMEX in: Chicago 2000
HSBC GM Flex Card 3500
National City 10000
Discover More 5000
Citizen's Bank 6000
Citi Hilton Hhonors 20000
Juniper NPF 15000
Chase Platinum 13000
Bank of America NEA 5000
AMEX Starwood 2000
ESPN 14000
State Farm
Principal Bank
Chase Sony
Associated Bank

Love these threads. Can't really do AOR myself as I have about 60 credit cards already, none of which were a part of any AOR. Pretty much got them as bonuses for them appeared, most of them were $100+ bonuses.

I was thinking about another one, but with the interest rates headed down the way they are, I may re-finance some real property to get an even lower rate, so I am now thinking of sitting this year out, at least for now.

Nice app-o-rama though! Nothing like making 4.5% on someone else's $100k!

Very interested to hear your details...

I've been working like crazy lately, so I haven't updated the OP with details yet (although I am attempting to track them) - I'm up to about $230k in new lines with several cards unaccounted for. I'll try to find time to post stats today or tomorrow.

Updated OP with card application stats and current (2/13) CLs

I think I lost out on the personal side for Chase - this due to the as-yet-uncleared Sony card I had a previous 0% balance on. Of the 6 cards I applied for, I received only 2, and was denied on the rest.

Also, I'm pretty disappointed on the business side in the Advanta card - generally people report high CLs on that one, but in my case, I had no luck

I'll try to add links to applications as/when I have time. I went through cardselection.com for several of them, to get a cash bonus.

Just wondering since the rates are low, how do you plan to use the money?

I have a Countrywide CD locked in at 4.9% and I will try to get as much into that as possible. Countrywide high yield savings is currently 4.75%, as well as new 6 month CDs. So I will try and move as much as possible into these.

Unfortunately I forgot how long it takes for money to move around from these things (checks to clear, ACH transactions to occur, checks to be sent by mail, etc.) - so I don't know if I'll be able to put a lot into the 4.9% CD. I'm still in the process of getting checks, depositing checks, etc.

I will probably keep some either in Countrywide HYS or Vanguard MMF for paying off the minimum monthly payments, but I expect the yields on those to drop significantly as the effect of the Fed rate decreases kicks in. I *may* try to diversify some of these into income funds or ETFs (not everything, though, since a large drop in NAV or share price would be a problem).

Update: Thus far I have $128k in funds deposited in a mix of CDs and high yield savings accounts. Some of the BTs have proven to be annoyingly difficult, and getting a $35.5k credit balance refund check from Citi has taken almost 20 days from the initial BT. Hopefully I'll get the rest of the funds out of these cards soon!

If anyone's interested in particulars (i.e. how-to, score impact, etc) let me know and I will post.

My only checking account is at Bank of America. Since others have reported sometimes adverse action from BoA (closing accounts and such), I discovered that Vanguard will also accept BT checks (provided you have an existing relationship with them). Unfortunately the clearing time for those checks is around 10-12 days (as opposed to BoA's 1-3 days), but it's a good alternative if losing your checking account would be a problem. To avoid this next time around I am opening a couple other checking accounts so that in the future, I can spread around the BT checks a bit more.

I am interested in this AOR in general. Simple particulars like score impact would be cool to watch. Someday (if this is possible years down the road) I would like to do one of these myself.

Updated the 2nd post with stats to date, also credit score information.

It's interesting that your TU score bounced back on the 30th. Do you know what caused that?


It looks in general carrying balance has a larger impact on credit scores compared to hard inquiry.

I compared the full credit reports from those 2 days. It looks like a couple changes hit. I lost 2 open accounts, lost 2 hard inqs, and (probably most important) my last 0% BT balance from my Sony card was reported as paid / closed.

1/29/2008 737 13 749 12 762 9 18/14/16 AOR inqs start to hit
1/30/2008 760 11 749 12 754 8 16/15/15 Sony card payoff hits


Yeah, I really liked the 45 point drop in EQ when my Chase card balance hit (balance of $18,850 on a $19,500 CL = 96.7% Utilization):

3/4/2008 705 14 692 14 746 9 26/24/26 Chase 18.8 hits EX
3/5/2008 705 14 682 14 691 9 26/24/24 Chase 18.8 hits EQ (finally!), TD Banknorth 11k reports to EX

I generally try to keep utilization at 88% or lower, although - sometimes the deal is just way too good, and I do charge it out (like on Discover's 0% for life they had a while back).

Not familiar with exactly what you're up to, Blue...is there a FAQ about what AOR/BT/etc refers to?

I get the gist - borrow low interest and invest in guaranteed higher interest to make the difference in rates.

This should be an easy $11,500 (+ or -) in interest... (before taxes, of course!!!)

The interest depends on the BT terms as well as the minimum payment each month.

Just curious - wouldn't this raise a red flag at the IRS? One year you report say a couple hundred bucks interest, and the next year 10k+? And then the next year back to a couple hundred?

Sure you can justify it if they ask, but I don't wanna be asked

Fortunately Chase set up a $571 minimum payment so I should be to a reasonable utilization in a couple months.



Exactly I think we have a thread around here somewhere - I'll try to dig it up.



Agreed, and (in a falling rate environment like this) how well you can lock in guaranteed rates like CDs.



Nah, as long as everything matches the 1099's you'd generate, I can't imagine it would be an issue. I am more concerned about my bank(s) being worried about potential funny business and freezing or closing accounts.

Updated stats to include my signup bonuses, just received my total of 40,000 Thank You Points from the Citi cards, which equates to $400 in gift certificates.

You may consider keep the points for flight redemption. That maximizes the value.

Yeah, I don't really fly anywhere though...

See previous threads here and here

Are all these 0% BT or are some of them 3% BT fee cards with no max BT fee? Congrats man, you are really sticking it to them. I did a very lame version of what you did a little while ago, but now those 0% deals are hard to come by and doing the 3% BT fee cards, I feel, is not worth the time to get that 1.75% or so interest.

No, all are 0% with max $99 fee (although most are far less than that). I can't take credit for all of this, a lot of the cards to use were pulled together from other sources.

So one interesting issue that I ran into today - on the Chase Business side, I had closed one of the cards that I got and folded the credit limit into another. Apparently the way that the CSR "closed" the account completely messed up my online access so that I could not pay my cards online. I spent 20 minutes on the phone with an extremely helpful internet CSR, and he got things fixed up for me so that I could make payments - although we still found a pretty major bug in the way information about multiple accounts is displayed on the web site

Lesson: If possible, set up different IDs for each business card you have with Chase.

Well, here's a little bonus I discovered. I didn't think it was possible to reallocate credit at AMEX from business to personal. Turns out you can - so I could move the $32.5k from the Starwood Business card (with no 0% APR offer) over to the IN:Chicago card, and either reduce my % utilization, or get more money out.

Thoughts?

Any concern about their notorious financial review?

A little, although I am happy to provide documentation on my (truthfully) stated HHI, so I wouldn't anticipate any negative impact if they FR'ed me.

Got my cardselection.com bonus check for $300-ish the other day.
Reward points are starting to show up for hotel programs:

15,000 Hilton HHonors points
10,000 Starwood Points

Can you elaborate this?

www.cardselection.com offers signup bonuses for being approved for certain cards. For a while they stopped paying bonuses, but they have started again. I did many of my card applications through there. Note that in order to see the bonus amounts, you need to sign up for an account.

Do it! Milk them for all they are worth.

Forecasting cash flow:

At the moment my minimum payments are approximately $3327.50 per month, which is about what I expected (about 1.5% of my total utilized balance). This means that I won't really be drawing down the balances fast enough that it'll hurt my overall total income.

5-6 months from now I will have to pay the cards that had 6 month 0% BT offers - this will be a total payout of $61,900, less whatever payments I have made on the cards thus far. At or around that time, my 5 and 6 month CDs will mature and I will have to shop for new ones, or just sit the money in high yield savings and/or money market funds.

At that point I should have interest from the matured CDs as follows:
$15,000 @ 4.3% APY for 6 mo = $315
$75,000 @ 4.05% APY for 6 mo = $1474
$25,000 @ 4.25% APY for 5 mo = $428

Updated 2nd post with stats.

Nicely done! Nothing quite like making a few thousand in interest on OPM (other people's money)!

In case anyone is still interested, I almost have (finally) all the money squeezed out of the cards. With this game, getting BT money out of some cards can be very painful, because some issuers will not issue 0% BT funds by check or through direct deposit.

The easiest way to work around this is to send the BT to a Citibank card (causing a LARGE negative balance), and then requesting a credit balance refund. I used this technique with the AMEX in:Chicago card, for example (AMEX being one of the cards that is really hard to draw BT funds from), to BT $35.5k to Citi and get a big fat refund check. The checks always make me nervous, because (1) Citi could balk at issuing it, (2) my bank (BoA) could balk or hold when depositing. I finally deposited the second (and last) check like this, with BTs from my Discover Business ($7300) and BankAtlantic ($19500) "laundered" through Citi.

I was waiting for the Citi cards and checks to clear off (needed to use them for ThankYou points bonus purchases as well) before utilizing my 3 remaining Citi BT offers:

$15k Citi Professional
$15k Citi PremierPass
$10k Citi Buinesss

The nice thing about Citi is that once you pay a card balance from your bank account, they offer you the ability to do the 0% BT directly to your bank account. This is great, because a check from Citi for the BT (also easy to get) usually takes 7-10 business days, plus time to deposit. So I should wrap up this remaining $40k of Citi funds and be close to the $290k that I was targeting. I ended up not using the National City $10k BT offer, because it was only for 6 months and would have involved yet another BT transfer through Citi.

At some point I will post a summary of how I got funds out of each of these cards, which can be helpful for first-timers.

All in all, do you feel that it is worth it all the works? It's a lot of works and your credit score does not come back in a few years. But you get yield and some other reward points. What do you think?

Depends on your situation. In my case, I think it is worth it (I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think so ):

- I'll estimate I put about 10-15 hours into planning and research.
- Monthly, I spend a total of about an hour making payments and keeping track of things (most of which is done automatically and/or through MS Money).
- I am at or near a computer and/or on the phone most of the day anyway, so it's not something that I have to go out of my way to monitor.
- The temporary hit to my credit scores won't really affect me, because:
-- I don't plan on any major purchases based on credit (i.e. car) in the next 2 or 3 years
-- I don't have any existing debt which would be affected by a drop in credit scores

So, let's say I spend 30 hours over a year's time working on this. Since I did it in a big way, I estimate $7k post-tax profit - this equates to about $200 or more an hour. I enjoy finance stuff anyway, and $200/hour doing something that I can easily fit into my day seems like a no-brainer.

One of the things that made this time around much easier was the up-front planning. I was very careful to plot exactly which cards I was applying for, how many per card issuer, and how I would get the money out. I have a detailed spreadsheet listing information about every card I have, payment information, and approximate payoff date. Although this makes things easy for me, I have told my wife that just in case anything happens to me, it will make it easier for her to help unwind this should it be necessary.

Just to correct you, aside from the hard inquiries (which can be removed to some extent with "bumpage"), my credit score should come back within a month or two of paying off the cards.

Hope you are Ok

http://consumerist.com/380943/banks-cancel...rs-credit-cards

No adverse action thus far...

Ugh, now that I say that... It seems that Barclay's Bank (aka BankAtlantic / Juniper) seems to have closed my 1 business card and 1 personal card with them... I'll call them today to see what's up.

Update:
Starting to pay off the 6 month cards. Citizen's Bank pulled a sneaky thing on me and got me for a week's worth of interest (apparently 6 months is not really 6 months at 0% with them).

Paying off:
AMEX IN:Chicago
WAMU ESPN
Citizen's Bank (Business)
TD Banknorth (Business)

Unfortunately I have had my CLs with AMEX and Chase get whacked this month on the remaining cards I have with them. It's unfortunate because I lost about $20k of CL on one of my AMEX cards Chase closed the oldest card I had with them (~9 years).

Otherwise, still hanging in there and collecting interest. My 5 and 6 month CDs will mature within the next month, so I need to ensure they don't renew.

From reading other boards, it looks like I got in on this at the right time, as conditions for repeating such a feat have gotten much more challenging.

Well, I'm finally paying the cards off, and within the next week or 2 will be done. For those who are interested, I'll total up the interest I made (I estimate approximately $4-5k, unfortunately lower than I expected due to falling interest rates), in addition to the rewards points and many free hotel stays listed in the original post, as well as lessons learned for the next time around. I do plan on doing this again, most likely after (and if) I refinance. Thanks to all for the contributions to the thread!

Thanks for the update. My guess is that this will be harder to pull off again due to the low interest rates and the tightening credit environment.

Summary of Earnings

Since I put the money I floated into new or 0-balance accounts, it was pretty easy, after getting tax forms, to figure out what I made on this deal. Here we go!

Rewards
10,000 Thank You Points (TYP) from Citi Professional
15,000 TYP from Citi Business
15,000 TYP from Citi Business PremierPass
(Redemption Notes: 10,000 TYP = $100 GC)
2,500 ESPN Total Rewards Points from Washington Mutual ESPN card (= $5 GC)
500 Circle Rewards Points from Citizen's Bank Business card (good for nothing, as far as I can tell)
= $425 in GC

Free Hotels

15,000 Hilton HHonors points ==> Approximately 60% of a 1-night stay
20,000 Starwood Points ==> Between 2 and 6 nights, depending on hotel class
20,000 Marriott Rewards Points ==> Between 2 and 4 nights, depending on hotel class
= 4 to 10 FREE hotel nights ==> $600-$1000+ value (most free rooms are at least $100-150/night - we stayed at a Marriott for 2 nights that was over $200/night!

Free Cash
$320 from cardselection.com referral links

Investment Income
$5335.51 from a combination of high yield savings, CDs, and money-market funds

Transaction Fees
$887 Total transaction fees on the balance transfers

Total after Fees
$5793.51-$6193.51 in cash and cash equivalents.

Although it was a lot of bookkeeping, once I got a system worked out, with auto-pay set up, and/or Outlook reminders triggering monthly, it was very little work to maintain this. I got worried that at the end, my bank would flag some of the very large transfers as suspicious (within the past month I have probably moved at least $150k through my BoA checking account to pay off all the cards).

Hope that helps inspire people to try this for yourselves! Once my debt cleared my credit report (cards started reporting 0), my EQ FAKO score is already back to 772, from a low of 660-680 (depending on credit bureau).

Would you do it again? Do you feel that the amount of money earned was worth the effort expended?

Very nice!