How far are you willing to go?

[mrpaseo]

This zero % credit card thing has me working overtime!
An opportunity arose to purchase some bullion (Platinum). I did not have the funds so I had to let it pass. Then I received a zero percent interest for 12 months offer.
I decided to purchase the Platinum along with some gold and silver. I charged $7,000. Normally I do not charge anything unless I have the money on hand, however, in this care, I had hard assets that I could sell in the event I had to pay off the cc.
The investment was good as precious metals went up, but with the economy and the way it is, there was more profit to be had if I could just wait a little longer… the problem was, the zero percent was about to run out.
Wouldn’t you know it, just prior to the 0% running out, I was offered another 0% cc. I transferred the balance…then started charging again. The trap is, when you have a balance, it’s easy to charge more, if you pay the balance off you tend to keep it under control. When I transferred the balance to this new card I decided to start saving money in my ING Direct account and earn 3% instead of paying off the balance. I managed to save a total of about $9,000 dollars in ING which would cover the bullion that I still have and the total balance of the cc. Then the zero percent was running out.
Again as before within a month of the zero percent cc running out we were offered another cc with a zero percent interest rate (All this took place over a four year period) we accepted this cc with the intentions of transferring the balance, however once we got the cc they said we could not transfer it because it is from the same company… we had to pay off the card… three days later a cc that I had for years offered us a zero percent rate to include transfers the cost…99 dollars. We transferred the balance (At the time was 14,500 dollars).
We now have two cc with zero percent interest until next July. Each card has a limit that exceeds 21,000 dollars. We have about 18,000 charged between them, with the full amount of 18,000 saved in ING Direct earning us interest. We plan on continue to charge as we normally do, only if we have the money to cover the charge, until we max out both cards or the zero percent interest is gone.
For every 10,000 we save we earn about 30 dollars per month. We earn about 50 dollars per month at the moment and in the end will earn about 120 per month in interest (If we can hit the 40,000 goal).
This is not for everyone, you must be in complete control of your finances to practice “Saving” like this (Not sure what to really call this).

Read below for more craziness!

[mrpaseo]

More to the story:
Alright, another opportunity arose a few days ago. I’m not sure if you all know about the dollar coin program that is going on right now. The mint is issuing Presidential dollars, they are valued at one dollar and will eventually replace the paper (Or more correctly cloth) dollar that we all know and love.

To promote the program and get these coin dollars out into commerce the US mint will sell these dollars for face value (One dollar) and they will pay the shipping charges to send them to your house. So, you give them one dollar (Or in this case, charge it on your cc) and they will give you one dollar in return in the form of cash money.

With this transaction I will:
1) Earn cc rewards
2) Charge up my zero percent cc
3) Put the money in ING and earn 3%

ONE STEP FURTHER:
We did not have a local bank account at this time (To turn the coins in) so we looked around and found a way to receive 75 dollars for opening a Bank of America account.

[boosami]

Glad to see I've got a fellow investor in precious metals. I have some substantial holdings in fine gold bullion, myself. However, my holdings are for long term stability, not short/medium term gains--they won't be sold off anytime soon. It's like Fort Knox up in here!

[Uneventoast]

That is a great idea...I have thought about doing something similar to this but my wife and I aren't on the same page. Maybe I will have her read your post and see if I can get her to change her opinion

[billchrz]

I don't know...it seems like an awful lot of risk and work for $120/mo. The stress of not having $40,000 CC debt (even if I had the cash to cover it) is worth much more to me than $120/mo.

[snafu]

The whole point is to understand the difference between good debt and poor debt. Good debt uses credit to buy items that have the potential to increase in value like education. The people who use credit to buy stuff that depreciates the moment they walk out of the store, car lot, etc. are more likely to get in debt over their head. What do you think?

[wincrasher]

Well, there is alot of risk in precious metals - you have to be on top of the market and be ready to trade or you could get burned.

The deal on the coins sounds interesting, but you are doing a bit of handling for what you are earning. If you don't mind carting all those coins to the bank, then bully for you.

Also, your 0% offers may start drying up as your FICO falls with your credit utilization creeping up.

Remember that it's very bad for your score to be maxed out on a card - your score starts to fall after you get over 30% of a card's limit. Multiple cards getting maxed will really hit you hard.