It’s no secret that I’m a gal with a lot of credit cards. I’ve opened them up over the years to take advantage of various credit card offer. I use the trio with the best rewards and the others gather dust.

In the past year, we’ve had a 0 percent offer on purchases on a particular card. We’ve carried a balance of anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few thousands dollars on that card and always had close to that amount racking up interest in a high-yield online savings account. Then when the balance got too big for my liking, I paid it down with the money in the savings account.

In recent weeks, I’ve been mulling over a particular credit card deal that came to my husband offering him 15 months of 0 percent interest not only on purchases but also on a balance transfer sans fee. That’s rare. We could finally buy that flat-screen TV we’ve been wanting and discussing for much too long (sometimes indulging in a want is probably worth it just to stop the constant discussion of whether or not you should give in). I could also buy last minute tickets to my cousin’s wedding (check out the NWA Last Minute Packages and Lastminute.com). Then we’d pay off the purchases over the next year.

It sounds smart– leveraging someone else’s money and profiting from it until reckoning day. But the problem is it encourages spending that I’m not sure we’d indulge in if it weren’t for the credit card deal.

How about you? Do you take advantage of 0 percent credit offers to buy things you’d otherwise have to wait to buy, to leverage the credit limit to earn interest, or to act as a safety net?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 4:12 pm and is filed under credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.