Discover Business Card $100 Signup Bonus!
After asking whether this site is one big credit card advertisement, and offering a huge list of 42 cards with 0% purchase offers, I’m posting this great deal from Discover on their Discover® Business Card (just check out the first 2 bullets!). I’m honestly a fan of this card myself and have used it for over $8,000 in purchases this year alone:
- Earn $100 Cashback Bonus when you apply now**
- 0% Intro APR* on Balance Transfers and Card Purchases for 12 months
- 5% Cashback Bonus® on office supplies, 2% on gas, up to 1% on all other purchases
- Earn 5 to 20% Cashback Bonus at top retailers through Discover’s exclusive online shopping site
- No Annual Fee
- Fee-free Purchase checks that earn Cashback Bonus® to pay merchants who don’t accept credit cards
** Earn a $100 Cashback Bonus when you make $1000 in purchases within 3 months after your account is opened. Offer valid for new accounts only; limit one per account. We are not responsible for merchant delays in processing transactions. Promotional reward will be applied within 8 weeks. See Cashback Bonus Terms and Conditions for full details.
Credit Cards as a Debt Reduction Tool
By Nickel
This is a guest post from Nickel, who writes about personal finance over at FiveCentNickel. And since that, combined with his four kids, don’t keep him sufficiently busy, he has recently launched yet another site, this time focused more narrowly on credit cards.
You’ve heard it before: you can’t borrow your way out of debt. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use credit cards to your advantage when digging yourself out of a financial hole. The trick here is to apply for and use balance transfers that reduce your interest rate — ideally all of the way to zero.
How it works
Start by applying for one of the many 0% credit card offers that are out there floating around. These cards come with promo periods as long as 12-15 months, so you can save a ton of interest.
Is this site “One giant credit card advertisement”?
In my post “42 Credit Cards with a 0% Purchase Offer“, a commenter asked that question. The comment got snatched by Spam Karma, and while I could have retrieved it, I preferred the tone of the second comment instead:
It does appear that you are pushing the idea of credit more and more lately, and advertising it.
It IS true that I’ve been providing links to credit card offers, and yes, I do get affiliate income from completed applications, but I want to show some stats. First, though, I will say that I promote cards that I would (and have) applied for myself. I don’t promote secured, pre-paid or “poor credit” cards because I know they shaft you with fees.
How much do I write about credit cards?
Ok, prior to July, 2007, I didn’t promote any credit cards because I was not an affiliate. But let’s look at some numbers:
42 Credit Cards with 0% Purchase Offers
In my post about Discover’s 5% cashback for Home Improvement and Clothing purchases, commenter Kristen asked the following:
I’ve heard you mention that you put your tuition on a 0% interest card. I’m looking to start school in the fall and would like to do the same thing, can you recommend a card with an initial 0% interest for the first year? Thank you!
And no, I didn’t plant this question. But I have just a few options for you (about 42) and here they are by duration. Please read the Terms & Conditions for any card you may with to apply for. Also most of these cards are rewards or rebate cards.
0% for 15 months on Purchases
With the onset of people using balance transfers to make money, many credit card companies are removing the maximum fees they charge on balance transfers or purchases. The following 2 cards have fees capped at $99 per transfer). There’s no fee for purchases:
Blue from American Express® - No annual fee. Also it’s a rewards cards.
Just spent $2,600, but I get rewards!
Although I registered for my summer graduate class over a month ago, I was holding out for as long as I could to pay the tuition. However, the $2,600 is due in about 2 weeks, and I wanted to make sure I paid while I remembered it. So as I celebrate the end of one semester, I’m hurting inside at the thought of spending $2,600 of my own money for just one class.
Nope, no employer reimbursement on this one. And not on the $5,200 (plus books) in the fall either. I’ve used up the maximum allotment for the year and now it’s all up to me.
BUT I’M NOT WORRIED! Why? Because I don’t have to pay interest on this debt for another ~6 months. I used my Discover Business Card which I got last December with a full 12 month, 0% on purchases and balance transfers. And the best part is that you don’t need to own your own business to apply. You can just enter your SSN as your business number and your type as sole proprietor. The card also has these perks (which is why I’m using it):
Closure: Amazon refunded the full amount!
About 2 weeks ago, I told you how my experience buying and returning heavy, expensive products to Amazon.com went. Well today I finally have closure of the experience when I saw the full $483.xx credit to my Discover card. They even refunded the $3.99 overnight shipping!
I shipped the product out of Staples on Monday, April 28th. It was received by Amazon 2 days later on April 30th (according to the UPS tracking code), but it took Amazon until May 7th to process the return and send me an email detailing how much would be refunded. I was glad to see they didn’t try to tack on a restocking fee.
And then this morning, May 9th, I logged into my Discover card account and saw the full amount was credited to the account. This was great because I the bill was due in a couple weeks and I didn’t want to have to send almost $500 to Discover and then have to get it refunded. However, at the rate we’re spending money for our outdoor projects (retaining walls), that $500 would be used up in no time.
We Added $2000 in Credit Card Debt…
but we paid it all off the next day!
We put about $2000 on our Discover More card to get the 5% cash back on home improvement purchases this quarter (the first $400 of it. The rest is at 1%), but what did we buy? Well, I’ll give you an image hint:
Yep, we bought about 580 square feet of Pergo Meadowbrook Oak laminate flooring for our front room, hall, kitchen and dining room (they’re all connected rooms), in addition to molding and thresholds. This flooring was $3.27 per sq. ft., which is on the pricey end (for laminate flooring). However, Lowes had a 20% off sale that ended this past weekend that brought the price down to about $2.61 per sq. ft.
In addition, the flooring already has the padding attached which, according to my experienced father-in-law (he does this for a living), makes for a much easier installation. We’ll be doing the installation ourselves, which shouldn’t be overly difficult since both our dads will help and both have experience with laminate flooring. The biggest concern is whether the floor will match BOTH our cherry cabinets AND our rosewood dining room furniture.
Check is in the Mail: Stacie’s Student Loan is Paid Off!
7 days ago, I told you we were in the homestretch of paying off Stacie’s student loan, and today we finally did it!
We had enough money in the checking account to pay the last $970 on the loan, but I don’t like bringing the balance down below $1000 (don’t ask because I don’t have a reason why). So I waited until I got paid today to send the last online billpay for Stacie’s undergraduate student loan. That’s over $10,000 paid off in the last 6 weeks! You’ll want to click through that link above to see how we did it, or keep reading below.
NOTE: Make sure you turn off any automatic bill payments when you pay off a loan! I almost forgot and a payment was set to go out tomorrow. I would have sent them an extra $150 and probably waited a few weeks to get it back.
So what’s next?
So we have 3 remaining debts other than our mortgage, and they all belong to me:
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