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Your student loans could be paid via credit card without a surcharge? Or is it just that the surcharge was lower than the interest rate and you planned to pay
by tedmiston 10y ago
Your student loans could be paid via credit card without a surcharge? Or is it just that the surcharge was lower than the interest rate and you planned to pay it off in 18 months so it was worthwhile? That's an interesting strategy I haven't seen before.
- aianus 10y agoYou can withdraw cash or transfer to your bank account from credit cards (at least in Canada).
- tedmiston 10y agoInteresting. Is that different than a cash advance on the CC? My cards which are otherwise great have ridiculously high fees for cash advances (20%+).
- aianus 10y agoNo, it's not different. That's not a fee, that's the interest rate. You would pay 20% over a year of interest. There are many many cards with promotional rates between 0% and 5% per year.
- tedmiston 10y agoIt's the cash advance fee (different from the normal interest rate on the card). Source: I used it once to get money out like a debit card... without realizing there would be a fee, and got charged the nasty fee. For the card I tried it on at the time, the fee was somewhere between $10–20 on a $100 withdraw. Never tried it again.
- aianus 10y agoOh, on my card it's a 1% fee with a $5 minimum. Still totally worth it if they're doing the 0% interest promotion.
- tedmiston 10y agoYeah, interesting "loophole" in the whole loans system. I'll have to do more research.
- sethhochberg 10y agoYep, my scenario was exactly like aianus's above. 1% transfer fee was much better than 6% interest since I planned to pay the balance off within the 18-month zero-interest period anyways. The card company issued paper checks specifically for the purpose of a balance transfer.