Reply to: Banks still giving away free money?

[d000hg]

It's more than likely you will get charged 5% for using a credit card. The seller will get charged that by Visa so he isn't going to swallow it.

Hmm. Other than councils and online booking fees, the only places I see charging a premium for CC payments are crappy shops like £-stretcher. Is that where you do all your shopping NL?

[Ticktock]

It's more than likely you will get charged 5% for using a credit card. The seller will get charged that by Visa so he isn't going to swallow it.

I bought my car on my credit card and didn't get charged any extra. Even worse for the seller, I did it in 3 separate transactions - deposit followed by the balance in 2 halves, clearing the card off in between each payment. The only reason I did that was because I wanted the rewards from the spend on the credit card, rather than just handing cash over / doing a bank transfer.

[doodab]

Fair point, if you have another card with the spare capacity this would be cheaper than opening a CC to take all the money out as a loan.
More risky though, in case you suddenly find you can't get approved for the new CC after putting 10k on one which isn't 0%

The sensible approach would be to wait for the 0% balance transfer one to be approved before spending the money on the other card.

If you have several cards it's a useful trick for managing cashflow. When I moved back to the UK from Germany I was fairly skint so I put almost all of my spending on a CC and transferred it to another 0% one. It cost the 3% transfer fee or whatever but that enabled me to stockpile cash for the warchest very quickly.

[d000hg]

I guess you could buy something on CC e.g. a car and then transfer it to Nationwide - that's free money when you take into account inflation.

Fair point, if you have another card with the spare capacity this would be cheaper than opening a CC to take all the money out as a loan.
More risky though, in case you suddenly find you can't get approved for the new CC after putting 10k on one which isn't 0%

[northernladuk]

I guess you could buy something on CC e.g. a car and then transfer it to Nationwide - that's free money when you take into account inflation.

It's more than likely you will get charged 5% for using a credit card. The seller will get charged that by Visa so he isn't going to swallow it.

[northernladuk]

SL 63?

Interesting you say that. I bid on a private reg from the DVLA yesterday. A63 AMG. Went for around 8K in the end. Not a chance I was paying that. I withdrew my 900 quid bid in disgust.

[doodab]

But isn't minimum payment calculated based on the interest and the outstanding balance?

It's normally a %age of the outstanding balance that is slightly more than the %age they charge as interest i.e. 2% when monthly interest rate is 1.5% or similar. Some are 5%.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Barclaycard are offering 31 months at 0% plus 2.99% transfer fee

Nationwide are offering 26 months at 0% but only 0.75% transfer fee

I guess you could buy something on CC e.g. a car and then transfer it to Nationwide - that's free money when you take into account inflation.

[d000hg]

Barclaycard are offering 31 months at 0% plus 2.99% transfer fee

Nationwide are offering 26 months at 0% but only 0.75% transfer fee

That's a fee for transferring existing CC debt, not a "withdraw cash" fee.

[DirtyDog]

Thinking of getting a comfy contractormobile and while I have the money there I want to keep my warchest healthy in case of downtime. I had a look at the latest bank transfer credit cards on offer and I was shocked. 29 months @ 0% with a 4% fee. That works out at 1.65% APR. is that not classified as free money?!

Looks like the cheapest loan one can get.....

Is this not symptom of the same disease we had before the crash?

Barclaycard are offering 31 months at 0% plus 2.99% transfer fee

Nationwide are offering 26 months at 0% but only 0.75% transfer fee

[AtW]

Not sure what you would do with the extra power in the new AMG 63 The newer smaller engines are unexpected to say the least. but yes the SL is very comfy regardless of engine

Power to the people...

[bobspud]

SL 63?

Not sure what you would do with the extra power in the new AMG 63 The newer smaller engines are unexpected to say the least. but yes the SL is very comfy regardless of engine

[AtW]

Managed to get my nice shiny merc on interest free credit!

SL 63?

[AtW]

Buying a new one.....

this is the one I have my eye on:

BMW 3 SERIES 330d M Sport 4dr Auto 3.0

2006, hardly new but could be a good deal...

[bobspud]

Wtf would you spend 50k on a 3 year old merc!?!? It depreciates half the value in 3 years and I really doubt you will spend 25k maintaining it for 3 years unless you want to change all its parts every service!

Mercs go from 20 to 200k I can assure you that the comfortable ones are not 20k new