Paul’s credit card arbitrage blog

A lot of us like to track our credit scores on a monthly basis, and sometimes even daily when we are in the process of an APP-O-RAMA. As mentioned before my score was a 735 and I will be closely monitoring it to see how much it will be impacted with the dozen or more credit cards I will be applying to this week. Usually most peoples score gets hit by about 50-100 points and after a few months of paying the cards back on time with a minimum payment the score will be back to normal.

The highest recommended places to check your credit would be here at a credit bureau like Equifax. Find out your Fico score at MyFico, or from Freecreditreport.com

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Fico Scores/Reports

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Hello guys sorry for the lack of updates during the weekend, I have compiled a list of good 0% apr balance transfer credit cards on

Credit-Land.com in the balance transfer cards section

www.fatwallet.com from some posters who did AOR’s this week

I will be applying to most of them next day or so. I am including busines cards as well for anyone that wants to get business cards as well.

 

 

Bank / Credit Card / BT APR / BT Length / BT Fee / Signup Rewards / Spending Rewards / Type /

PERSONAL

Discover More card / 0.00% / 12 / 3% $75 Max / 12000 Miles / 1 to 2 Miles / Per

Discover Miles card / 0.00% / 12 / 3% $75 Max / 12000 Miles / 1 to 2 Miles / Per

 

Bank of America / Bank of America Rewards™ American Express® Card / 0.00% / 12 / 3% $75 Max / $50.00 / 0 to 1 Point / Per

Chase Bank / Sony Card / 0.00% / 12 / 3% $75 Max / $100.00 / 1 to 5 Points / Per

 

CitiBank / Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network / 0.00% / 12 / None / 10000 Points / 1 to 3 Points / Per

CitiBank / Citi® Platinum American Express® Card / 3.99% / 0 / 3% / 15000 Points / 3 to 10 Points / Per

Elan Financial / Visa® Business Platinum Travel Card / 0.00% / 6 / None / 2500 Points / 0 to 2 Points / Per

First National Bank of Omaha / BucksBackSM Platinum Edition® Visa® Card / 0.00% / 12 / 3% $75 Max / $20.00 / 1.00 % to 1.00 % CashBack / Per

HSBC / The Weekend Card® / 0.00% / 12 / 3% $99 Max / None / 1.00 % to 2.00 % CashBack / Per

National City / National City Visa® / 0.00% / 6 / None / 5000 Points / 5 to 5 Points / Per

National City / Principal Bank Cash Back Credit Card / 0.00% / 9 / 3% $75 Max / None / 2.00 % to 0.50 % CashBack / Per

RBS National Bank / Kroger Personal Finance® 1-2-3 Rewards™ Master Card / 0.00% / 12 / 3% / None / 1 to 3 Points / Per

U.S. Bank / REI Visa® Gold Card / 16.24% / 0 / 4% / $20.00 / None / Per

U.S. Bank / Baylor University Alumni Assoc Cash Rewards Visa / 3% / 12 / None / None / 1.00 % to 1.00 % CashBack / Per

UMB Financial Corporation / UMB Visa Platinum / 0.00% / 6 / 3% $50 Max / None / 0 to 1 Point / Per

Union Bank of California / BucksBack Card / 0.00% / 12 / 3% $75 Max / $20.00 / 1.00 % to 1.00 % CashBack / Per

Washington Mutual / Washington Mutual Platinum MasterCard® / 0.00% / 9 / 3% $75 Max / None / None / Per

 

BUSINESS

American Express / Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card / 2.90% / 6 / None / 10000 Points / 0 to 2 Points / Bus

Chase Bank / Marriott Rewards® Visa® Business Card / 3.90% / 6 / 3% $75 Max / 15000 Points / 0 to 1 Point / Bus

Chase Bank / United Mileage Plus® Platinum Business Card / 18.24% / 0 / 3% $75 Max / 25000 Miles / 1 to 2 Miles / Bus

CitiBank / CitiBusiness PremierPass Card / 0.00% / 12 / None / 15000 Points / 1 to 3 Points / Bus

CitiBank / CitiBusiness® Card / 0.00% / 0 / None / 15000 Points / 0 to 3 Points / Bus

Discover Bank / Discover Business Card / 0.00% / Var. / 3% $75 Max / None / 1.00 % to 5.00 % CashBack / Bus

Elan Financial / Visa® Business Platinum Rewards Card / 9.99% / 12 / 3% / 1000 Points / 0 to 1 Point / Bus

Fifth Third Bank / MasterCard BusinessCard / 0.00% / 12 / None / None / None / Bus

 

Also here are some cards that will allow you to get Airline points and other rewards (I dont recommend them for balance transfers though)

Chase BA 20K miles
FirstUSA/Chase SWA 16 units
Amex Delta 15K miles $30 CS
Amex Biz Delta 15K miles $60 CS
Amex biz SPG 10K points $60 CS
Citi AA 20K miles after $750
Citi Biz AA 20K miles
Chase Marriott 20K points no fee first year $30 after that
Chase biz Marriott 15K bonus
TD Ameritrade Starpoints bonus

 

 

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I received quiet a few questions regarding a previous APP-O-RAMA that I helped my friend with. He is a 20 year old college student that doesn’t live with his parents. He doesn’t have a Job,but makes a few K a year on the side. He was able to secure over 65k without having to make anything up on the application. He wrote that his annual household income was 110k per year. The money figure is actually what both of his parents make per year combined. It’s ok to state your parents income as household, because after all ,they are the only ones that will take you back into their house when your girlfriend kicks you out of hers . He was never questioned about the income and he put down that he is self employed and used his address and phone number as the business contact info. Sole proprietors aren’t required to incorporate their businesses and therefore they can use their own names as the business names if they wish. Although exaggerating your income is not always a good thing especially when doing it with an American Express card (read:financial review!) you should be able to get away with it if its fairly reasonable number like high $xx,xxx per year to a $1xx,xxx per year.

As far as questions about Interest Rates. In my opinion rates will be going down even further. Our economy is really headed down in the foreseeable future. With all the borrowers on Jumbo (500k+ houses) mortgages hanging by a thread the government will do anything to bail them out, even if it means devaluating our currency even further so they can afford to pay for their McMansions. I’m going to lock in a nice 9/12 month cd rate hopefully at around 5.5% if I can still find that somewhere online. I just don’t see interest rates going up any time soon. Although its not heading the way of the Japanese yen or the Swiss frank where there is almost no interest.

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To define it in one sentence would basically say… borrowing money at 0% interest and investing it at 5-6% interest at the bank.Sounds simple right?? well it is… sort of. APP-O-RAMA stands for applications, and TONS of them!

Background: Credit card issuers love enticing new and existing customers to join the rest of the Americans into their favorite place to be… in a crap load of debt! To do this they must first dangle the carrot via a credit card with a 0% balance transfer, usually good for 12 months or so. What this basically means is that you can make all the purchases you want during the next twelve months, provided that its not a private jet because the salesman would hate to tell you that your card has been declined… twice. All you have to do is just pay the minimum balance per month,which is usually 5% of the balance and you get hit with no interest charges.

However if you like to spend a ton of money and get yourself into a ton of debt this blog isn’t for you,and since I just gave you this brilliant idea maybe you can buy me a NYC metro card as a gift. Anyways, I will take the credit limit that is given to me and either asking the credit card company to send the money to my bank account or to “pay off” one of my other credit cards with no balance, thus creating a credit for that amount on my account.

Personal background: I have a pretty good credit score of around 735 according to the Experian credit reporting agency. Total reported household income of just over 100k (this figure shouldnt include your bummy friend that is crashing at your place). I also have a corporation as well so I will be applying for business cards too but only later on as I want to have everything organized with the personal cards first . I currently have a Citi card that was opened in 2003 with 15k credit limit (CL) ,an Amex Blue card with 50k CL, as well as a personal American Express gold card opened 7 months ago and one for business. Neither of those have a set credit limit,but like I said before If I try to purchase new Ferrari with it I *may* not be able to drive out with it the same day.

The plan: I will be applying to about 25 personal credit cards within a period of a few hours. This is because your credit gets reported everyday and if an if you apply to a bunch of credit cards and try to do so the next day a HUGE RED FLAG will go off in the credit risk department and you will get a nice phone call as well as short and sweet letter telling you that you have been rejected. Although not as painful as that prom date rejection from High School, this is really not a good thing because you want as much money from those thieving credit card companies as possible!

I’m willing to bet that quiet a few of my credit card applications will not be instant decisions so hopefully they will still approve me with that days credit report(still showing that I’m not a credit risk). I will be applying to about 3 different cards from each issuer like Citi Bank, Chase, Bank of America, HSBC, and so on.

I will find the cards I’m going to apply to at the balance transfer cards section on
Credit-Land.com in the balance transfer cards section and also apply to some of the cards that others on Fatwallet have already applied to.

The Potential: Although this isn’t a cash cow business that will make you rich, this is sort of a get rich slow scheme as you can only make as much as your credit score will allow you to. While a lot of people can make under 10k per year , there are some people that can make up to 20-30k per year doing this. Not bad for one full days worth of work huh? Seriously though, this can get pretty involving when it comes to tracking your monthly credit card payments so this isn’t for an irresponsible person that forgets to do things.

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Hello everyone, I wanted to start off with a few quick things about me. I don’t want to go into it too much because I hope to do that over time in my posts. I am 22 years old and I’m a super-senior at Baruch College in Manhattan majoring in Finance. It’s a City school so I don’t really get killed with too much school work and therefore I have lots of time for my entrepreneurship ventures.

I’ve been working/making money online since I was about 15. First I was selling CD-R copies of movies and games on online forums and later on finally getting into the eBay businesses that I still help run today. These days I’m slowly transitioning my businesses off of eBay to create an e-commerce empire consisting of several stores in different niches.

The reason I am starting this blog is because a lot of my friends always ask me to help them out with their money problems by giving them ideas on what they can do online to make some extra cash for going out or just making silly impulse purchases. A few months ago, on my favorite forum (Fatwallet) I came across what is called an APP-O-RAMA. This is a fancy term for credit card arbitrage aka making free money due to the kindness of credit card companies

I wanted to be able to have an online diary where I will be updating my progress every couple of days as I try to make thousands of dollars per year just like many others have successfully done so before me. I will share the good the bad and the ugly as I take on this new project and hopefully it will help everyone out there trying to make a few extra bucks whether it’s to help pay for their college, car, hour, or an expensive coke habit

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