"Joseph Meehan" wrote in message news:HXTyd.11116
Right on Joseph. OT I know but you gotta buy stuff to do 'home repairs'! Right? Smart moves. a) Pay off your card balance shortly before the due date. b) Don't ever; except an extreme emergency use the CC to get cash in hand. Interest at a high rate starts immediately. c) Don't use bank machines that don't belong to organisations other than your own; there WILL be 'other' charges. d) Be familiar with what your financial institution, bank etc, charges, if anything, for various transactions. Combine or avoid to minimize them. Take advantage of any (I won't use the word free, because nothing ever is; let's say "that are included") that are suitable for you._ And if you do have to borrow most people can get an unsecured line of credit from a bank or other financial institution at interest rate depending which country you are in, between 4.5 and say 7%. A secured loan would most likely be even cheaper. A LOC is a lot cheaper than even the lower interest rate credit cards; e.g. we have only one CC on which the unpaid balance interest rate would be 18.9% (Annual rate). If we ever paid any interest! Since getting that card, about five years ago, we have paid exactly one cent of interest (That's one cent, btw, not one per-cent!) I don't know why it's even one cent; maybe a computer slipped a gear in the third place of decimals somewhere and put the remainder difference in as interest? The one advantage of a CC is that you can delay the cost of paying for a purchase by up to approx. two thirds of a month. In the meantime you get a little time to plan how to meet the cost. Right now, for example, we know exactly what we owe on the card and when it is due to be paid, electronically to continue to avoid any interest. But I get the understanding that this is a pretty savvy group of people who could probably teach me a thing or two! All the best financially. Terry. PS. In the meantime I'd like to know who has the use of my money during the two to five days it takes to disappear from my bank account as a transfer payment to reach my payee! But that's another topic.