Reduce Debt
Sometime You Just Have to Ask
I’ve been filling out some free offers on CashCrate lately. One of those offers was to see my FICO score for free! My score turned out to be 787. I’ve been trying to get as high as possible – the holy grail being above 800 for me, but I figured that score wasn’t bad. I have a 787 FICO. What do I do now? Make phone calls.
I immediately hopped on the phone to give my friends at Chase a call. I asked them if I was eligible for a promotion rate on purchases. Turns out I wasn’t BUT they could offer 0.95% for 6 months on balance transfers. They would send out access checks with that rate and I could use them to make a purchase by writing a check. That way my purchase would qualify for the promotional rate. I figured that it was too much work for me.
Next, I called Bank of America to ask them for a promotional rate. No dice there, but they wanted to invite me to apply for their World Platinum card. That card has a promotional rate of 0% for 12 months then a fixed rate of 12.99% after. They would give me a $50 statement credit if I made $50 in purchases within the first 60 days. There were also some other benefits too. I asked for all the terms including balance transfer fee. There was no cap on the fee, and the transfer fee was 4%. Ouches. After doing the math I realized that if I transferred by Chase balance over the new card, I’d break even with the interest after 3.5 months. Sounds great. I told the rep to go ahead.
During the application process she asked if I owned a home and how much the mortgage was. It felt great to tell her yes, and that I had no mortgage. She went off script for a bit because she didn’t believe it. Turns out that she’s 5 years older than I am and have been trying to save enough for a down payment on a house. I told her that she needed to downgrade the house that she wanted and to live now as if she was in the house. If she couldn’t pay her potential mortgage now, then she couldn’t pay it later, but I digress. Not only did an advertiser pay me to see my FICO score, but after picking up the phone, I stand to save a couple hundred bucks in interest over the next year. All it took was two phone calls. Think about calling your creditors too! The worse they can say is no.
