Balance Transfer Tricks? Eg; Paying Excess Amount or Buying Gift Cards?

GoogleFroogle on 19/02/2015 - 18:23

So I have the option of using $19K (0% for 16 months)of balance transfer from ANZ to shut down my commbank (~5K is all I need). FYI: I have control of, and the ability to pay all my debt, this is just money spinning).

I am told by commbank they may even reject a big over payment - or I may have to pay a cash advance fee, despite being in the positive if I were to get 19K transferred and then put the remaining 14K on my homeloan).

So I guess the question is, what can I do to get the most out of my balance transfer?

Some ideas for you to offer points on;

1) Accept CBA's cash advance fee (2% I believe) and still accept that as a >2.29% win (4.29 on homeloan (actually more like 6% as it is over 16 months) minus 2% cash advance fee).

2) Just stock up on gift cards that I know I will use over the next month or two, like Woolies, Caltex/BP (before I shut it down). And ultimately be getting them @ 0% loan rate. I think I will be missing out on my reward points, as I will be shutting down my commbank credit card. But Rewards Vs 16 months interest free, I think I'll choose interest free.

3) I am completely open to ideas…hit me with them. :)

Financial

Comments

  • Mad Max on 19/02/2015 - 19:29

    How can they charge you with cash advance fee if you are in credit and use your own money? If you can transfer the money online between the CC account and another CBA account there should not be any fees as long as your CC account does not go in debit.

    • Baysew on 19/02/2015 - 19:43
      +2

      From CBA

      As long as your CBA CC was in credit on previous day, you would only have to pay a fee of $2.50 if transferring via NetBank
      (Rather than 2%) Refer to points 3 and 7.

      • GoogleFroogle on 19/02/2015 - 22:00

        Thanks for the link, Baysew. I had read that page and was extremely confused as to whether it was saying that, or whether I still had to pay the higher out of 2% and 2.50 or not. I have a tendency to really not trust CBA after another few instances of them charging me from a very shady interpretation of their rules.

      • GoogleFroogle on 19/02/2015 - 22:07

        Yes…point 7 definitely looks like it makes a strong enough case. So as long as they don't pull shinannigans and deny the payment…I should be good.

        As far as I can see its just a bill payment from another bank more or less. Cheers

  • cloudy on 19/02/2015 - 21:07
    +2

    Frm reading ur post, u seem intelligent in ur finances, so I have little to add, option 2 sounds like a very good idea.

  • tomclancy on 19/02/2015 - 21:36
    +5

    If you have a friend with a merchant account (or if you have an abn you can setup Stripe easily yourself) then ask them to charge 14k to your cba card. Do the balance transfer to pay off the new $19k cba card balance. Then ask friend to refund the $14k charge. This will reverse all merchant fees so your friend has no costs and cba run your account into credit by $14k and since you didn't overpay it would get you around the cash advance fee.

    I have a business with a merchant setup with Stripe and I do similar charges/refunds for my friends regularly for various bank trickery reasons :)

    • hashtagbargain on 20/02/2015 - 09:11
      +1

      Impressive!

    • jaybmate on 20/02/2015 - 10:52

      So from there can you just transfer the positive 14k into your home loan? without any fees? Or would you still be charged the 2% fee from CBA?

      • tomclancy on 20/02/2015 - 11:02

        Not sure about that, I was more suggesting the OP then use the $14k credit on normal purchases. It's not efficient if they can get away with $2.50 charge only, but if it was 2% then that's a different story.

        • jaybmate on 20/02/2015 - 11:07

          Ah so your 'technique' stops you from paying the 2% when the positive balance is effectively transferred? so you have the 19k interest free on ANZ, and you just use commbank card for purchases. Not sure if you would know this but would you still get rewards on the commbank card in this situation?

        • tomclancy on 20/02/2015 - 15:31

          @jaybmate:
          Yep - that's it.

          And yes definitely you get rewards from the Commbank purchases out of a debit credit card position. This I know for sure.

        • Baysew on 23/02/2015 - 09:54

          @PBG: When the refund goes through, wouldn't the rewards points also be reversed ?

        • tomclancy on 23/02/2015 - 12:30
          +1

          @Baysew:

          Yep - the reward points on that transaction. But all future transactions that chew through the negative $14k balance (groceries, fuel etc) will have points attached to them.

  • coolsteps on 26/02/2015 - 23:13

    i always try and get refunds put on my visa debit card so i dont loose my points. to avoid fees you can always ask your provider for a cheque or call up and try to get the over paid credit balance paid into your bank savings account. amex are ok and very keen to return funds to you asap for small amounts but for large credit balances they ask you for proof that money came from you which can take some time. ge money send you a cheque and are the worst it took over 1 month. citibank post you a cheque too. with westpac cards you can transfer via online banking a cc positive balance to your westpac savings account but they charge you $2.50. another unpublicised tip is you can do balance transfers to supplementary cards you hold in the same name too. ie wifes credit card account provided you are an additional card holder. anyone know how nab and anz treat balance transfers into their credit card account's making a positive balance and transfer the overpaid balance out how do they treat it and what fees are payable?

  • GoogleFroogle on 27/02/2015 - 16:36
    +1

    As an update for y'all. They accepted the Balance transfer and the surplus came out with a fee of $2.50, which is not bad by their usual standards. So all in all worked pretty well. Thanks for the help everyone.

    • brisdaz on 05/10/2016 - 12:08

      How did you transfer it to your home loan? Do you have to have a transaction account with CBA to transfer it or just a credit card is fine and the counter can transfer it for you? I don't want to hold so much cash!

      • GoogleFroogle on 05/10/2016 - 12:42

        yep…had at the time a cba transaction account went from CC (in surplus) to savings (check your own terms and conditions blah blah) :)

  • sickllama on 27/02/2015 - 23:55

    FYI Citibank offers cheques to self as a balance transfer option

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