WaMu Online CD Offer for 0% Balance Transfer Arbitrage
If you’re interested in making money with 0% balance transfers, but have been sitting on the sidelines due to generally low interest rates, then check this out…
WaMu is currently offering 5% APY on their 12 month online CDs. This beats the best available online savings account interest rates by a long shot, and creates a fairly generous interest rate spread (i.e., you’ll borrow at 0% and pocket 5%).
Because these are 12 month CDs, you might want to look for a 15 month 0% balance transfer offer just to be on the safe side. That way, you’ll definitely have the capital back in your hands before the 0% introductory period runs out. My favorite 15 month offer right now is that Advanta Platinum Business Rewards Card.
A word of caution… Just be sure that you have sufficient cash flow to handle the minimum payments throughout the year. These typically run in the neighborhood of 2% of the outstanding balance per month. Alternatively, you can hold back some of the balance transfer funds in a regular bank account to cover the minimum payments instead of tying up the full amount in a CD.
Oh, and I should also note that I’ve heard from several readers that funding these CDs from sources outside of WaMu can be tricky, so it might be best to go ahead and open an account with WaMu before pulling the trigger on this deal.
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I ended up funding from an outside source (e*Trade) because I was afraid I would miss the window for the 5% while I waited for money to transfer into Wamu. It worked just fine. I entered in the routing info for E*trade, wamu sent two small deposits (and then took them back, which was new) to E*trade, and I verified the transfer with wamu. Then the CD money was moved from E*trade to my new wamu CD without incident.
It did take a few days, but no problems.
I may have been in the minority though…
Comment by Caro — Sep 7th 2008 @ 5:27 pm