I Applied For 5 Credit Cards & Here’s What It Did To My Credit Score

While I have more than my share of credit card debt, I am at the point where I am actively searching for zero percent balance transfer offers.

I want to move my existing debt to zero or low interest plans so that I can pay it off without having to pay interest.

Well, since I noticed on Credit Sesame in September that my credit score went up from paying off some other cards, I decided to take advantage of it.

So, I searched for the best offers out there and applied for them. Five of them actually.

Yup. I applied for five credit cards in the same day.

Out of the five, I got approved for three of them with zero percent balance transfer offers that saves me interest on $7,500 of my debt now.

Score!

However, I was anxious to see what this did to my credit score.

It has dropped by 25 points since September!!!

Can you believe that?!

So, the first month after the applications, it dropped 13 points.

Then 10 the next month and two last month.

Yikes!

Good thing I don’t need any new cards for balance transfers right now.

Looking at that data, I assume that the initial 13  point drop is a direct result of the applications that I made online.

And the resulting drops might be due to too much new credit or high credit usage on those new cards since I did immediately transfer a balance to them.

What Now?

Well, as you can imagine, I am not exactly happy about the huge credit score drop.

This is especially true since my car insurance renews this month and we all know that credit score is one of the factors used to determine your premium rate.

That being said, I also know that the effect of paying off two credit cards tends to average around a 10 point bump up.

At least that has been my past experience.

So,  I have two cards that I plan on paying off by the end of the month as they are not on zero percent offers.

So, hopefully that will bump me back up a little bit.