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Originally Posted by jbcjr14
What's with all the investing? LMFAO
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Investing is the way to go! You'd be amazed how much you can make your money work for you. I spent many years paying what I like to call "Asshole Tax" because I wasn't paying attention to what the hell was going on. I define "Asshole Tax" as any monies I have paid out that I would not have if I had been paying attention. Electric bill late fee? Asshole tax! Need to paint the quarter panel of your car because to accidentally scratched it walking the lawnmower past it? Asshole Tax! I swore to myself that I'd never pay it again and I try my damnedest to others to pay me theirs.
The biggest trick is to only buy things you can afford to pay cash for to begin with and then you can make credit card companies pay YOU to use their card.
For instance, my wife and I bought a 50" plasma last summer from Costco. The list price was $4K. When it's all said and done, we
will pay a little more than $3K. Will pay? We haven't yet and here's how it goes...
$4000 - original price
-$500 - rebate from the manufacturer
-$40 - 1% off all purchases on the Costco Amex
-$120 - 3% off all purchases as a Costco Executive Member (we upgraded just for the TV).
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$3340 balance on the Costco Amex.
Now for the fun part!
We transferred the balance from the Amex to a Visa w/ 0% interest until July '07. Since the Visa isn't taking our money outside the tiny minimum, we invested the $4K the TV originally cost into 9 month CDs earning 6.5%. By the time the 0% Visa ends, we'll have earned over $300 on the CDs. That will push the final TV price down to a little over $3K.
We may very well repeat the process and keep on milking it... look into getting another 0% card, transfer the balance again, put the original cash and interest back into CDs to earn even more. That will make the final TV price another few hundred dollars cheaper. Lather, rinse, repeat...
The best part is the 0% transfers means that the interest we're earning on the CDs is essentially coming right out of Visa's pocket. Visa is paying me Asshole Tax! ROCK!!!
Invest, Baby! Who wants to work forever?