Paul's credit card arbitrage blog

Obama economics and future inflation

Paul — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:14:28 +0000

With the golden days of the APP-O-RAMA behind us. It is time for us to move on to a new strategy. Gone are the days of 5% interest rates and high credit limits offered to almost anyone.

We are in for troubled times and now due to President Obamas policies that will come into effect as he gets into his office, we will face tough inflation ahead.

The future holds sky high inflation due to a huge supply of the dollar and a shortage of commodities.

The playbook is as follows:

Long: Gold, silver, Oil, Agriculture,
Short: us treasury bonds.

I will make new posts shortly talking about why i believe this is the new arbitrage/safe haven play

Fed Keeps interest rates unchanged at 2% amid Lehman Brothers, Merril Lynch, and AIG crisis!

Paul — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:32:56 +0000

Hello everyone. This has been a week to remember. Lehman brothers the 158 year old storied wall street firm is now GONE.

Merril lynch.. GONE (sold to Bank of America)

AIG on the verge of Bankrupcy!!!!! If AIG goes, then the world is in for some VERY tough times. AIG is interconnected to almost every business in the world!

The key fed Funds rate that everyone was expecting to be lowered is sticking at 2% . What this means for you is that your money is going to still make the same at the bank it has been for some time. What it means for the banks and financial institutions is that they are on their own raising capital in this already very tough environment!

Stay safe.. will update shortly

Amex Financial Review : a TOTAL Disrespect for the consumer!

Paul — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:31:41 +0000

So I just wanted to talk about a friend of mine who was notified that he was under an amex financial review last week.

Basically at the gas pump his card wasn’t approved and later turns out they shut it down until he provides Amex access to his TAX RETURNS from the IRS!!

Who are they kidding to ask for such personal information. I advised him on what to do and this is what many people on fatwallet finance do when they get an American express financial review call or letter saying that his account is frozen.

When you call them and put your credit card # into the phone prompt for identification you get sent right to the financial review department, YOU DON’T WANT THAT! What you want to do is at the prompt just keep pressing 0 till you get a regular operator, then you tell them you want to cancel the card,which they will do promptly. They cannot see that your account is frozen and is under financial review.

The reasons you don’t want to speak to the Amex Financial Review Department

They are Rude Pricks
They will talk down to you and try to make you give them access to your private IRS info by having you sign a form and send it in to them
If you close your account through them, on your credit report it will say that “the account has been closed by the granter.” That looks really bad on your account and doesn’t reflect well on your credit score….

So hopefully nobody here has to go through what he did, and by the way his balance transfer is still fine he doesnt have to pay it all off even though he closed the card, and he still keeps his special apr % interest rate

SUCK IT AMEX financial review !

PS : if you want to check your credit report for FREE , the Freecreditreport.com link on the left is still valid so you can still get your credit report from Experian just cancel after 30 days to avoid any fees

Amex comes through with my balance transfer check…. TWICE!!!!!!

Paul — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 04:18:10 +0000

So as I am writing this, I have in my hands 2 checks for 14k each!!!! Those morons sent me the check twice by accident. No it is not the same check either, its 2 unique checks. Now my lazy butt has to go to the post office and mail it back tomorrow because my account now says I owe them MUCHO DINERO $$$

Anyways about my Amex Blue credit card… I like the card. Yes I even took one that has a 4.99% interest rate on it because I found an investment that pays off a bit more than that and it is worthwhile for me. If you are curious as to the nature of the investment, lets just say it has to do with the “carry trade”. The interest rate is for the Life of the Balance, so if you have a solid investment that pays over 5% then you are good to go with this card for as long as you want. I predict that interest rates may be cut just once more but I doubt it would impact this Balance transfer offer.

Also theres a few new 12 month 0% Balance Transfer cards that you may like for your upcoming APP O Rama.
You can find a list in the Balance Transfers section over at Credit-Land.com
There are some 0% balance transfer Discover cards, Citi Cards, and Amex blue and IN:NYC Card (6 months)

Amex.. they are not as customer friendly as you think…

Paul — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:29:27 +0000

Well I just got off the phone with AMEX after a slight interrogation with one of their customer service reps. I simply wanted to know the status of a 14,000$ balance transfer that i sent over to my Amex Gold Card from Chase. They were saying how that is an unusually high credit balance and wanted to know why I paid so much money even though my bill was only a few hundred dollars. I explained to them that I thought I was going to be making a large purchase and wanted to prepay it ahead of time. The problem with such a larger credit balance with Amex is that due to their security process with fake checks and whatnot ,it may take up to 30 days!!!! to receive a check for my full credit balance. It’s ok though because they said that it was already sent to me and I will get it shortly.

The importance of paying your app o rama credit card arbitrage bills on time.

Paul — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 04:08:45 +0000

One late payment will put a big dent in your credit report. It shows creditors that you are not a careful individual, too lazy to pay your bills on time or just a deadbeat! In return they will drop your score by at least a few dozen points. Make sure you set up an auto pay system on the online site of your credit card issuer. Every issuer has an online site where you can pay bills, with the exception of CitiBank credit card site all of them will allow you to auto pay, or schedule your bank account to automatically be debited for either the minimum amount due or the full balance. This way you will never fail to make a payment and your rates will not be jacked up from the 0% apr you have now to a crazy 20% or so if you miss a payment by a few days or hours.

Be careful guys~

Now that the APP o RAMA is under way where is the highest paying Bank to place credit card arbitrage money?

Paul — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:10:23 +0000

There are a few options out there for you guys. Most people reading my credit card blog that do APP o RAMAs have jobs and therefore they are able to pay the monthy minimum charges using their salaries. This option allows them to safely place the money in a bank CD ( certificate of deposit). Right now bank CDs are paying a lot more than savings accounts pay. For example www.CountrywideBank.com pays 5.65% on a 1 year CD. This is your best bet to make the highest profit using credit card arbitrage.

If you want to go with a savings account because you are unable to pay the monthly minimum credit card bills you will need to go with a reputable bank. We all saw what happened to Everbank last mont, so maybe earning an extra .005% on your money may not be worth it if you go with a smaller bank as a result. Both AMtrustdirect.com and Umbrellabank.com are paying the highest rates on savings accounts.. around 5.35% each. You can go with Emigrant direct Eloan or ING if you want a very safe place to put the money, however the return on investment will only be 4.75%.

It is really up to you guys to decide where to put the money. If you feel like you can trust online banks with less brand recognition than Emigrant, Eloan, or ING make sure each account will have under $100,000 in it, this way they are FDIC insured.

List of my 0% balance transfer APP o RAMA credit cards. I NOW HAVE a $130k CREDIT LIMIT thanks to my credit card blog!!!!

Paul — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:05:27 +0000

Hello guys, well it looks like I received most of the cards that I have been approved for during my APP O RAMA. here is a list of the cards I got so far. NOT bad for a college student, huh? My student credit card arbitrage is officially in full swing and Im so happy my credit card blog actually helped me organize myself and my ideas neatly so I can follow through with it. I have already requested checks from the issuers that allow it and I requested others in forms of bank transfers and the Chase cards I had to transfer the balance to my Amex gold card.
amex 25000 bank of america amex 475 bank of america visa 19500 Bank of American world points 15000 chase visa card 8000 citi diamond 9900 citi drivers 9900 citi professional 8990 citi professional 5900 disney chase card 10000 gm card hsbc 6000 juniper bank national park 3200 RBS mastercard 8000 $ amt Total CL $129,865.00

My credit score didn’t take a big hit either!! It will recover after about 6 months of prompt monthly payments.
You can get your Credit score for free here at FreeCreditReport.com just dont forget to cancel before the 30 days are up so you dont get charged.
Get your FREE credit score and more!

My APP O RAMA cards are coming in! college student Credit card arbitrage begins this week!

Paul — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:36:24 +0000

Hey guys sorry about the lack of updates during the week. I’m slowly getting lots of cards in the mail. In the past few days I received about 2 or so cards per day. Each time I get an envelope I bend it to see if theres a plastic card inside and when there is I get very excited like it’s Christmas and i want to open the envelope to see how much my gift was for(credit limit). So far Citi bank has been great to me and I got over 40k in 0% balance transfer money just from them!

I will post up all my new limits and cards in the next few days.

take care,

Paul

PS:You can get your credit score for free here at FreeCreditReport.com just dont forget to cancel before the 30 days are up so you dont get charged.

The super cheap bastards guide to saving thousands of dollars in college.

Paul — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:39:58 +0000

guys, I decided to take this post down to discourage people from doing some of the stuff mentioned here that I did years ago. I received many comments from people about this blog post and many were not too positive. Instead I’m just going to focus on credit card arbitrage and my app o rama.

Paul