Credit Card Arbitrage Pointer

[squiffy]

This may already be common knowledge. But I have been using credit cards for 20 years now and just discovered this. So I thought I'd share it.

I have about 7 credit cards with Bank of America -- Visa, MC, and Am Express.

I had no idea this was possible, but if you have say Credit Card A with a limit of $10,000 and Credit Card B also with a limit of $10,000, then BofA lets me move the credit from one card to the other, so long as both are BofA cards.

So I can move $9,900 in credit from card A, leaving it with a $100 limit, and move the $9,900 to Card B, whose limit goes from 10,000 to 19,900.

This is a really neat feature if Card B has a promotional offer of 0% interest on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months.

Then, when the promotion runs out, you can move the credit back to another card with a better promotion or reward. Just pick the card with the highest valued reward or promotion.

Citibank also lets me do this. Not sure about other credit card companies. Does anyone have this experience with other card companies.

I assume it's generally done. But I had no idea you could do it.

If you have a decent credit score and don't mind it taking a temporary hit, you can apply for multiple cards. And if the card has a nice $50 or $100 bonus for the initial purchase, you can make some easy money. Not a lot of money. But enough to buy a nice dinner or two, just for signing up.

I would estimate that so far this year, I have made about $355 or so, just by opening up credit card accounts and making a single purchase, or opening up a bank account and putting in a minimum deposit to avoid monthly charges.

[jumbojacks]

If you dig around Amex's site you can also reallocate your credit by yourself. They had a glitch though I'm not sure if it still works but if you reallocate your credit to a card, you automatically can get a credit increase to you original limit.