It's official. I've transferred over $7,500 of my debt to the Citibank card leaving only $1,499 on my previous card. With the transfer, I'll only be paying about $5 per month on interest instead of about $30 and it puts me closer to being able to use my credit line for my devious money making scheme using those 0% interest checks from your credit card.
Here's the plan. Once I have $0 on my credit card with the credit line of $23,700 I can use one of those checks that gives you 0% interest for 6 months to put directly into my savings account. The credit card company will charge $50 max for the balance transfer and that would be the only fee I would have to pay as long as I paid the money back within the 6 months. I would write the check to myself for $23,000 and sit on it for 5 months to give myself a bit of a cushion. Even better, if I deposit the money into my ING Direct account it would earn me 4.75% interest until April 15, 2006 with their promotional Winter Save Up Sale. Assuming that it takes me another month and a half to pay off the remaining $1,500 on my card, the money could be deposited in the ING account in 2 months. Unfortunately, that would only leave me about 15 days to earn at the higher rate, but so be it! Even after that date it would be earning at the regular savings rate of 3.8%. That would earn me over the 5 month period a little over $314 or $63 a month. Not bad for doing nothing at all.
Tomorrow is the first day of classes. I'm nervous to go back but also excited to see what it will be like. Wish me luck!
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Balance Transfer Complete!
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8 comments:
I love the money making idea! I think you're spot on in calling it devilish! Either way, good luck tomorrow!
I admire you and hope my debt can go down like yours has. I am at about 17,000 after being at almsot 20,000 in October. My goal will be about 15,000 by summer, and hopefuly 11,000 by Christmas. You are doing wonderful and you are truly an inspiration
Just be sure to read ALL of the fine print. Zero-percent offers are notorious for gotchas. Otherwise, hope it works out!
mbhunter is right - certain uses of those checks are considered cash advances. so while a purchase would be 0%, if you use the check for something the company considers a cash advance, they'll charge you the higher cash advance rate - so read that fine print carefully!
You have inspired me to not shoping and eat out for almost a month, saved me a bunch of money, and I felt really good about it.
About your scheme, I only want to remind you to be careful with these people because they are out to entrap you. If for some reason not in your control, the mailman did not deliver your payment check on time, for example, they are going to slap you with a fee that would wipe out all your profit.
So please be extremely cautious.
I like the money making idea, but as others said, there are risks. Mostly that the CC companies have tons of fine print, and if you break any of their rules, you lose ALL your profit and come out in the red.
Is it really worth all that hassle for a few hundred $$$?
GOODLUCK on your scheme! Use caution cc companies prolly already know about people trying to do this and believe me they don't let any opportunities go by...... but if you succeed you will be our hero. ;)
Your idea is good. I never think about it.
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