Credit card?

When I bought my truck, the dealer wanted 30k for it. Based on KBB, a internet reading that was a decent price. They wouldn't budge and told me if I didnt buy it somebody else would.
They originally offered me 10k for my trade in. KBB and other places said closer to 15k for the value. I kept telling them this is more then I'm willing to pay out the door. They either needed to lower the price of the truck or increase my trade. All they wanted to do was increase my # of months to lower the monthly payment. I kept reminding them I had the $ part figured out, they just needed to sell me the truck.
Finally had to start walking out before they decided to understand what I wanted.

 

I have a lawn buissness. I was buying a new mower a few yrs back and one of the promotions they had was 0% 48 month financing. I could have payed for the mower in cash up front, but that would have killed my business savings. Instead I used their money and kept mine available incase of a emergency. There was a $100 financing fee, but I still got more then $100 worth of advantage in my favor on the 10k mower loan.

 

I do a little "churning" sometimes. One thing I always do is make sure every account/card I have is enabled in Quicken auto update. I hit the button almost everyday and it logons onto maybe 10 accounts and pulls the transactions. This way I see a summary with due dates and never miss a payment date. It's kind of a hobby.

I'll look at paying an annual fee if the card gives me enough rewards that I can use to make up the difference. The Amex Delta Skymiles card no longer is worth it to me. It was 20 years ago when it cost $95/yr, got double/triple miles on many purchases, and the flights cost 10,000 miles and not 60,000 to get somewhere. For your $130 annual fee you can earn a trip which makes up for it. $500 for an Amex fee is a chuck of money and the trips/times/seats I get now are terrible.

I also don't care about a credit score anymore. I use to fret over needing to be over 800. It got worse just paying off my home and not using credit anywhere. I just don't need a credit score much. My next job will be retirement. I get background checked heavily each month for my current position and anything above 750 will be just fine.

 

I do kind of the same thing, I have all our cards in an excel sheet with a link to the log in pages. I check everything and pay everything each week. Churning is amazing if you can make it work. I have an added bonus of driving a ton for work so I put somewhere around $1200 a month on credit for gas that I get reimbursed for. Makes hitting minimum spends super easy. I also generally stay away from the $4-500 annual fees, just can't see it being worth it. Amex and airline miles in general have gotten less valuable as of late, I think the CC companies are starting to catch on.. haha

As for credit score, I mostly don't pay attention now either. I just try not to open a bunch of cards right before I apply for financing on something else.

 

Quoting part of the above:

"Getting and using a credit card, but paying it off every month, won't help you build a credit rating--and will actually hurt your credit rating when the credit card company reduces your available limit (which has happenend to me) --for paying it off every month, and for not using enough of my credit limit."

The above statement is totally not true -- at least for Us -- We have paid less than 50 bucks in total interest (lifetime) on credit cards (this was due to a mistake on our part)-- we have been using them a lot for about 47 years -- I will put our credit rating near the top!

 

Matches your screen name, Bunk.

I've been using CCs since the mid 70's. Have never ever made a dime's worth of interest payments.

NEVER have had a limit lowered. Always readily raised when I request. Even have one card that we only spend a couple hundred on each year to keep it 'active' that we carry as a secure card overseas in case our primary card has an issue (lost, stolen, closed due to merchant breech, etc) and that card has never been questioned.

Haven't had a mortgage (other than a couple of limited use HELOC's) on either home in over 7 years.

Haven't financed a vehicle since 1988.

Depending on utilization (which I admit can run high, maybe limits should be raised) my score is always over 800. Usually well over.

I wouldn't care about score, other than stupid usage like insurance ratings, etc. where a score is an arbitrary indicator.

BTW, mentioning a HELOC. Great source of instant cash IF you have the means to pay off quickly by other asset liquidation, or carry a small balance if you have favorable rate offerings. Just a 'different' type of CC is one way to think of it.

 

I swear... Credit scores are so dumb... I check the score that one of my CC's gives me every month.... Vantage 3.0 model. dropped 11 points. Only change was my utilization went from 6% to 3%. At the end of the day, it doesn't change anything, but it's still annoying.