Don't Sleep on those Mail Offers & Balance Transfer Offers

Image above courtesy Navy Federal

Elevated Offers in Mail Mean it Makes Sense to Open Your Mail

While there are plenty of bad credit card offers in the mail, I've found that there are also a decent percent (though the minority) of offers that are actually good, where it makes sense to take the time to open your mail when it's sent to you and it's clearly a credit card offer. Some of the offers I've received in the mail in the past have been massive, i.e. from Capital One & Amex.

In this case, I received double the publicly available offer for the sign up bonus, which included the opportunity to earn 40k bonus points (a $400 value) if I spend $4k in the 1st 90 days.

Why Balance Transfers Can Actually Make Sense Even if You Have No "Need" to Carry a Balance

Even if you have no "need" to carry a balance, if you're looking at a prospective balance transfer offer where you're relatively certain that you can get more positive than negative out of it, it can still make sense. For instance, in the case of this card, there's no balance transfer fee. The interest rate is .99%. My savings account interest rate is over 5.12% with CFG. Mathematically speaking, as long as the utilization acquired wouldn't be overly hurtful to my credit, it makes sense to spend $4k on this card, then (if sufficient purchases were already planned/needed) spend $ on another card with a solid earning rate (better than this card, i.e. the Capital One Miles card or Amex Blue Business Plus if going for non-category based bonus spending), transfer the balance over to my new Navy Fed card, then pocket the money that you would be using for paying it off into a high yield savings account that is geared toward you not being tempted to touch it, then reap the returns of 5.12% interest minus .99% interest.

Related:

Best Balance Transfer Cards

Avoiding Credit Card Pitfalls