I just transferred $25k to a Bank of America credit card – leaving a -$21000 balance. I then transferred $18800 (the max ‘cash advance’ amount) this to a BofA checking account. Bank of America put a hold on that card and left a message on my phone. When I called them up they proceeded to ask a bunch of questions – including why I transferred the money (I just said “arbitrage” – a word she did not understand).

She said if ever “overpayed” again my account would be closed. Nice.

My account still seems to be frozen. Hopefully I can get this resolved quickly.

even though i have good credit, i currently have about 12 mortages on it. last year i was upto about 20!
i think this affects my rate a bit.

The difference between Prosper and credit card arbitrage is that there is no penalty if I don’t make a loan for a few days. Also, there’s really no fine print that could make the whole deal worthless. Lastly many people that I talk to find Prosper fun and not “work.”

NCN, the idea is that Lazy Man won’t be paying the amount based on a 1-year repayment schedule anymore. He’ll move the $13k to a credit card, and only pay the 2% minimum, but keep putting money away as if he was paying off the HELOC. Instead, the difference (hopefully) will be in a bank earning 5%. Thus, he may not get the full interest benefit, it will be somewhere in between. (Aren’t HELOC amortized over a long term, like 10 years anyways?)

Personally, I think Prosper is more work for the reward than 0% balance transfers, so if you like doing Prosper I think you’ll do fine with this.

Let me know if you have any specific questions. I expect you to teach me about HELOCs later :)

Are you for sure going to pay it off in 12 months? The good thing is that if it is on a HELOC, if for some reason something horrible happens then you can just move it back to the HELOC right?

Your credit score may decrease a bit since it’s unsecured debt now vs. secured, but it definitely won’t kill you.

i set up my monthly payments a couple days after the next scheduled statement date. this ensures that you are not going to overlap or miss the monthly minimum payments. your online cc statement will show when your next statement is scheduled.

Also, and I’m not sure if it’s still true, but insurance premiums in the past few years have had a correlation to your FICO score. Watch out for impacts like this.

2million, I am keeping it small to start – just looking for enough to pay off my HELOC. So that’s one card for the next 12 months. If all goes well, I would consider more in a year, but we’ll see.

Doing a little math, $13,000 at 8% is $1040 or $86.66 a month. That’s not exactly chump change.

I could focus on the principle, but I feel that this is a unique time where, with a little effort, I could earn 15% on Prosper.com. I don’t know if that opportunity will be there in a year or two. So I’m playing both sides, putting money in investments while I pay off the HELOC. At the same time, we’ll be financing a wedding for 180 people this year (with a little financial assistance from parents). In addition to this, one of the first rules of Lazy Man is to fully max out 401k and Roth IRAs each year.