YAFinanceT

[saymyname]

I've been using 0% credit cards for a few years now. I just keep the balance in the bank making interest and then when the 12 mo promotional period is over I do a balance transfer. So far I've found two cards that do balance transfers with no fees: citibank and discover. I then make all my purchases on a sony 0% visa card.

Here's a new one though. I called up citibank to cancel my account after my 0% purchase period ended. They offered me another 12 months of 0% for balance transfers. At first I was thinking of just transfering everything back to them (since it would net me 2 months - the time since I did a balance transfer away from them), but then they offered to just send me a check for my entire credit limit.

So now I have a check coming that I can just keep in the bank at 5% for a year.

What's the catch?

What they don't tell you is that if you make a purchase, it's at 10% and there's no way to pay off just the purchase portion. So you'd essentially ruin the benefit of getting 5% in the bank if you spent enough since you'd be stuck with a 10% rate until you payed off the whole card. So I'm not going to make any purchases.

Next year I gotta find another 0% card that will give me a high enough credit limit to transfer 3 credit card balances to. Wish me luck.

 

[Albis]

yeah i've noticed that in the fine print as well. when you make payments, it goes towards your balance transfers first before it touches the purchases

 

[edro]

Pay it off FTW?

 

[SampSon]

That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

 

[saymyname]

Originally posted by: edro
Pay it off FTW?

I have something like $25,000 on 0% credit cards. I'm making $1250 a year off of it sitting in my bank.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

 

[saymyname]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

 

[SampSon]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

They would be much better off in any number of other traditional investment vehicles.

I'm not sure brave = dumb, but it probably does in this case.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

 

[Jassi]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Who is that?

 

[saymyname]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Unless he's getting those checks like I mentioned above, then he better be making a ton of money. The reason it works for me is because I don't spend beyond my means. I don't think $25K worth of CC debt is that excessive over roughly a 2 year period. Especially when it's not really debt since I have the money. Having $400K though is insane if he bought $400K worth of stuff on plastic.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Unless he's getting those checks like I mentioned above, then he better be making a ton of money. The reason it works for me is because I don't spend beyond my means. I don't think $25K worth of CC debt is that excessive over roughly a 2 year period. Especially when it's not really debt since I have the money. Having $400K though is insane if he bought $400K worth of stuff on plastic.

It's purely for invesment. No money spent. All money earning competitive rates and very liquid. The man has had several cards for 10 years and have credit limits of 50k each. I added up the total credit line and it was 765K.

Once you get several hundred thousand in the bank, it's easier to get more cards as they don't care as much (for whatever reason) that you owe. The banks seem to like high savings balances.

Hell, I took one of those zero fee/zero percent checks last month because it was there. Parked in t-bills for 3 to 6 months at a time and will turn in when due!

 

[SampSon]

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Unless he's getting those checks like I mentioned above, then he better be making a ton of money. The reason it works for me is because I don't spend beyond my means. I don't think $25K worth of CC debt is that excessive over roughly a 2 year period. Especially when it's not really debt since I have the money. Having $400K though is insane if he bought $400K worth of stuff on plastic.

How is $1,000 a month in credit card charges not excessive?

What exactly are you spending $1,000 a month on your credit card for? If you have the cold hard cash to cover your expenses every month why are you putting it on a credit card and floating it from card to card?

You would be better off investing your money.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: SampSon

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Unless he's getting those checks like I mentioned above, then he better be making a ton of money. The reason it works for me is because I don't spend beyond my means. I don't think $25K worth of CC debt is that excessive over roughly a 2 year period. Especially when it's not really debt since I have the money. Having $400K though is insane if he bought $400K worth of stuff on plastic.

How is $1,000 a month in credit card charges not excessive?

What exactly are you spending $1,000 a month on your credit card for? If you have the cold hard cash to cover your expenses every month why are you putting it on a credit card and floating it from card to card?

You would be better off investing your money.

If you have a family, it's not hard at all to get over $1000 per month, especially if you have all of your bills paid (what few I have) by the CC. I do it for two reason: The rewards of the card and the fact that I only have to book one item in the checkbook for all of those transactions. I monitor closely what I spend. If I can pay a minimum payment and float the rest at zero percent, you can bet that I will place the remaining balance in a higher rate liquid account and pay on the minimum.

Heck, I spend nearly $2k per month on gas, groceries, phone bill, etc. that goes on my card. I always have money to pay it off, but don't if it's zero percent.


And, this has nothing to do with investing money. This is money that would have been spent anyway. Why not earn rewards (up to 5%) on the money when spent and earn interest on the float at the same time?

 

[simms]

Good strategies... too bad they don't have a 0% in Canada. (or maybe they do... but I'm not aware of one).

 

[saymyname]

Originally posted by: SampSon

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Unless he's getting those checks like I mentioned above, then he better be making a ton of money. The reason it works for me is because I don't spend beyond my means. I don't think $25K worth of CC debt is that excessive over roughly a 2 year period. Especially when it's not really debt since I have the money. Having $400K though is insane if he bought $400K worth of stuff on plastic.

How is $1,000 a month in credit card charges not excessive?

What exactly are you spending $1,000 a month on your credit card for? If you have the cold hard cash to cover your expenses every month why are you putting it on a credit card and floating it from card to card?

You would be better off investing your money.

I put food, gas, my long distance phone plan, xm radio, vacations and just about everything else on there. $1000 a month isn't really that excessive at all in my opinion. I can't invest my vacation and food money. I could pay for it with cash but I make money off using the cc.

If it makes you feel better, I'm allowed to put my rent on my CC but I don't do that. Maybe I should have. That would have doubled my cc debt.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: saymyname
If it makes you feel better, I'm allowed to put my rent on my CC but I don't do that. Maybe I should have. That would have doubled my cc debt.

If you're allowed to with no extra costs, why not? Place it on a rewards card and get the 1%. Take the money and pay off the amount at the end of the month or save longer if you feel the desire AND have zero interest.

#1 rule: Make sure to have money readily available to pay ALL off BEFORE due. Better yet, ALWAYS have enough money to pay it off if you're going to play arbitrage with the CC folks!

 

[SampSon]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Unless he's getting those checks like I mentioned above, then he better be making a ton of money. The reason it works for me is because I don't spend beyond my means. I don't think $25K worth of CC debt is that excessive over roughly a 2 year period. Especially when it's not really debt since I have the money. Having $400K though is insane if he bought $400K worth of stuff on plastic.

How is $1,000 a month in credit card charges not excessive?

What exactly are you spending $1,000 a month on your credit card for? If you have the cold hard cash to cover your expenses every month why are you putting it on a credit card and floating it from card to card?

You would be better off investing your money.

If you have a family, it's not hard at all to get over $1000 per month, especially if you have all of your bills paid (what few I have) by the CC. I do it for two reason: The rewards of the card and the fact that I only have to book one item in the checkbook for all of those transactions. I monitor closely what I spend. If I can pay a minimum payment and float the rest at zero percent, you can bet that I will place the remaining balance in a higher rate liquid account and pay on the minimum.

Heck, I spend nearly $2k per month on gas, groceries, phone bill, etc. that goes on my card. I always have money to pay it off, but don't if it's zero percent.

I understand that, I charge a few thousand a month, but I pay it off even if it is 0%.
The rewards of my investments are greater than anything a credit card could ever offer.
Why make it incredibly complicated?

As for the OP, he is carrying a 25K revolving balance, is searching for another 0% card and is claming that he is within his means. I don't see how that is a very prudent.

 

[saymyname]

Originally posted by: SampSon

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: SampSon
That's standard practice.

What you need to do is figure out ways to make more money or live within your means and not play the credit card balance transfer game.

What if you owe no debts and play the BT game just to earn interest?

There are people on FW that are very brave. They carry a balance of $400k + just to get the interest! :shocked:

How would you even get $400K worth of credit on CC's?!

Not sure. man has 765k worth of available credit!:shocked:

Unless he's getting those checks like I mentioned above, then he better be making a ton of money. The reason it works for me is because I don't spend beyond my means. I don't think $25K worth of CC debt is that excessive over roughly a 2 year period. Especially when it's not really debt since I have the money. Having $400K though is insane if he bought $400K worth of stuff on plastic.

How is $1,000 a month in credit card charges not excessive?

What exactly are you spending $1,000 a month on your credit card for? If you have the cold hard cash to cover your expenses every month why are you putting it on a credit card and floating it from card to card?

You would be better off investing your money.

If you have a family, it's not hard at all to get over $1000 per month, especially if you have all of your bills paid (what few I have) by the CC. I do it for two reason: The rewards of the card and the fact that I only have to book one item in the checkbook for all of those transactions. I monitor closely what I spend. If I can pay a minimum payment and float the rest at zero percent, you can bet that I will place the remaining balance in a higher rate liquid account and pay on the minimum.

Heck, I spend nearly $2k per month on gas, groceries, phone bill, etc. that goes on my card. I always have money to pay it off, but don't if it's zero percent.

I understand that, I charge a few thousand a month, but I pay it off even if it is 0%.
The rewards of my investments are greater than anything a credit card could ever offer.
Why make it incredibly complicated?

As for the OP, he is carrying a 25K revolving balance, is searching for another 0% card and is claming that he is within his means. I don't see how that is a very prudent.

Bank: $25K
CC: -$25K
Interest: $1250

Bank: $0
CC: $0
Interest: $0

That's my logic.

That's not even counting the cc rewards like cash back (which I get very very little of) and points (which I never redeem since it's 200,000 points for a magazine subscription)

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: SampSon
I understand that, I charge a few thousand a month, but I pay it off even if it is 0%.
The rewards of my investments are greater than anything a credit card could ever offer.
Why make it incredibly complicated?

It's not complicated and it's not money that you would "normally" have to invest. If you pay it off each month, it's gone. If you pay minimum until it's due (i.e. interest rate jumps to normal from zero), then you invest the remaining amount into a solid, liquid account and earn money duing the period. I don't see anything complicated about it unless you're loose with payments and then you can get your @ss burned! :Q

Originally posted by: saymyname

Bank: $25K
CC: -$25K
Interest: $1250

Bank: $0
CC: $0
Interest: $0

That's my logic.

That's not even counting the cc rewards like cash back (which I get very very little of) and points (which I never redeem since it's 200,000 points for a magazine subscription)

BINGO!!! FTW!!!

 

[SampSon]

Bank: $25K
CC: -$25K
Interest: $1250

Bank: $0
CC: $0
Interest: $0

That's my logic.

That's not even counting the cc rewards like cash back (which I get very very little of) and points (which I never redeem since it's 200,000 points for a magazine subscription)

Get an interest bearing bank account. Get an interest bearing money market account.
What kind of interest are you getting .05%? Thats less than half of some of the lowest interest bearing checking accounts available.
Obviously do what you feel is right, but I think there are much better ways of going about it

As it stands do you have 25k+ in cash to pay off your CC debts?

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: SampSon
[Q]Bank: $25K
CC: -$25K
Interest: $1250

Bank: $0
CC: $0
Interest: $0

That's my logic.

That's not even counting the cc rewards like cash back (which I get very very little of) and points (which I never redeem since it's 200,000 points for a magazine subscription)

Get an interest bearing bank account. Get an interest bearing money market account.
What kind of interest are you getting .05%? Thats less than half of some of the lowest interest bearing checking accounts available.
Obviously do what you feel is right, but I think there are much better ways of going about it

As it stands do you have 25k+ in cash to pay off your CC debts?[/quote]

Bolded for you!

That's the point. Take your pay in full amount, send in minimum to CC...place rest in higher yield accounts. Tax equivalent rates on T-bills (6 month) is around 6%.

 

[saymyname]

Originally posted by: SampSon

Bank: $25K
CC: -$25K
Interest: $1250

Bank: $0
CC: $0
Interest: $0

That's my logic.

That's not even counting the cc rewards like cash back (which I get very very little of) and points (which I never redeem since it's 200,000 points for a magazine subscription)

Get an interest bearing bank account. Get an interest bearing money market account.
What kind of interest are you getting .05%? Thats less than half of some of the lowest interest bearing checking accounts available.
Obviously do what you feel is right, but I think there are much better ways of going about it

As it stands do you have 25k+ in cash to pay off your CC debts?

I make 5.03% on my money. I have more than the $25K needed to pay off my cc debt in the bank.

You're talking about making interest on the money for the 25 day statement cycle. I'm talking about making interest for the 365 day 0% interest promotional cycle.

So what am I doing wrong? If you have a way I can make more money then I'm all ears. Someone mentioned T-bills, which would effectively push me above 6% so I'd like to figure that out. CD's have lower interest than my money market so that's no good.

 

[Engineer]

Originally posted by: saymyname
I'm talking about making interest for the 365 day 0% interest promotional cycle.

Or longer (Citi has 15 month cycles at times)

Not to forget that you can get many bonuses of up to $100 in cash or gift cards for getting the cards in the first place!

 

[saymyname]

Originally posted by: Engineer

Originally posted by: saymyname
I'm talking about making interest for the 365 day 0% interest promotional cycle.

Or longer (Citi has 15 month cycles at times)

Not to forget that you can get many bonuses of up to $100 in cash or gift cards for getting the cards in the first place!

Citi has a 15 mo cycle which I already used. They offered me another 15 months only if I made $300 worth of purchases (at 10.99% interest) so I stayed with 12 months this time around and took that check.

I'm still waiting for my $100 from Sony.