Has Anybody Gone For One Of These Offers

[crowderd]

Not sure on the posting guidelines, so I'll leave the exact URL off. Has anybody jumped on the free Dell pc offer if you sign up for a cc from a certain bank? Have to maintain a balance of a certain amount, depending on if you want the desktop or the laptop? For the desktop, the minimum balance is $2,500 for 18 months. You get the Dimension 2400 with:

2.4 GHz Intel® Celeron? Processor
256MB RAM
40.0 GB Hard Drive
16X CD ROM Drive
15? Digital Flat Panel Display
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

If you do the math (@ 9.9% int rate), you're spending about $375 for this unit. Have seen hot deals this good or better but I was wondering...if you've already got $2,500 tied up in cc bills and you need a new pc, maybe it's worth it? I know it's not the cadillac of the Dell line, but for your average basic machine????

 

[rival]

well if you had to make payments, which you would probably need to, the balance would have to be much higher than $2500, min payment a month on that could be around $50 a month for 18 months..so you're paying more in interest...cant be that great of a deal

 

[crowderd]

You make a valid point. I guess my thinking was...why not just transfer $2,500 from an existing cc to this one and make the same payments you normally would...ok, ok, I see your other point which is, you'd prob have to keep something like $3,400-$3,500 in the account to make sure it didn't get under the $2,500 minimum as you made payments each month.

O well, food for thought.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you already have over $2,500 in CC debt, you should be looking for a low-interest card and paying it off ASAP, not getting a card that charges 23% interest then "gives" you a $400 Dell after charging you $750-1,000 in interest.

Deciding to stay over $2.5 in debt for over 1.5 years is not the best kind of financial planning. Cut back on luxuries, toys and expensive fast food and get out of debt.

It's much sweeter to be earning interest (even the lousy 2% you get these days) and to have savings for emergencies or if you want/need to change jobs.

 

[Night201]

What Dave said