Five Credit Card Financial Resolutions

Guest: Board Monitor
Board Monitor/ Administrator
Post subject: Five Credit Card Financial Resolutions
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 9:08 am

Great story on CNN yesterday containing 5 tips to start the New Year off of the right foot...financially speaking:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/02/pf/saving/willis_tips/index.htm

I am proud to say that http://www.cardratings.com is referenced in the article.
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Curtis Arnold
Board Monitor
http://www.cardratings.com
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Guest: Ira
SENIOR MEMBER (Member for 2 yrs.+)
Post subject: Five Credit Card Financial Resolutions
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 3:00 pm

Interesting article, but it ignores the real power of reward cards and puts too much creedence in what I consider the feeble Bank of America program which is only good for lunch money. If I spend $35.55 on groceries, why would I use the BofA program and receive $0.45 deposited in a savings account, rather than use one of the cards which offer a 5% rebate and receive $1.78 in rebate money. I wrote a detailed response to her pointing this out, but apparently CNN published a bad email address for her and my note didn't go through.
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Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Guest: Polonius
SENIOR MEMBER (Member for 2 yrs.+)
Post subject: Five Credit Card Financial Resolutions
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:31 pm

Only good for lunch money? I don't spend $250 on lunch, but that's what I'll be getting from the BofA promo.

The key to the offer is the 100% match for the first 90 days. After that, I agree it's not a good program. But that 100%? Much better than a rewards program for the first three months IF you play it right.

I don't disagree with what you said, Ira--it's NOT a good deal for most. But we both look for loopholes and advantages, and this promo has a nice one for the first three months. I've used it by constructing a little macro that pays my cable TV bill in $1.01 increments, over and over again, causing BofA to put 99 cents in my account for each payment. On my $115 cable/internet bill, I'll make over $100 by paying that way--far better than any rewards method of paying. Kind of fun to watch the macro at work too!

It's all in reading the fine print and playing the game...