They treat the entire credit limit as an outstanding loan now, I believe.
So if you’ve got 6 CC’s with $15K on each, even though you might have $1K total outstanding, they treat it as if you have existing loans of $90K.
They treat the entire credit limit as an outstanding loan now, I believe.
So if you’ve got 6 CC’s with $15K on each, even though you might have $1K total outstanding, they treat it as if you have existing loans of $90K.
Have for at least 6-7? years since we first signed up
I used to do that and I still use the card a lot. But a) many places now charge a surcharge if you use a card, and the surcharge is higher than the value of the points you earn, and b) most if not all cards now cap the number of points you can earn in a month, so even if you put a $30,000 car on the card you’ll only get 4000 points.
IIRC some cards treat some bill payments as cash advances which I avoid like the plague.
I tend to get a little aggrieved when merchants whack 1.5% on Visa/MC payments. It’s very convenient for them, saving on expenses and risks of holding cash, and they should include it in their pricing structure. I hear that CC use in coffee shops and the like is around 50% or even more.
Amex and Diners Club excepted. They have high merchant fees.
Will never understand personal loans, maybe someone can enlighten me on what they are used for?
I have 1 CC which I use sparingly (rarely get above $1500 a month). I use it for Direct Debits like insurance and things like that because I refuse anything to be DD out of my savings accounts apart from the home loan repayments.
Have 1 other card that we use for overseas because we get the spot rate and no fees.
That’s why I usually just take them on for the bonus. The actual points earn after the bonus sign on points can sometimes not be worth it.
The points are never worth it. Just take the bonus sign on points and be done with it. Westpac had 80000 Qantas points so I took that, but then I couldn’t be ■■■■■■ chasing more points on different cards so stopped there.
You should be grateful you don’t have to get one as I assume you have the savings to buy what you need. Others aren’t so lucky.
But are we talking about buying it for cars or to travel or other stuff?
A friend of mine took out a $10000 personal loan to travel. To me, that’s stupid. But I might be old fashioned.
Agree about travel but cars I can understand. If you’re living pay to pay and you need a car for work as there are no viable public transport options, guess a personal loan is the only way to go. Of course you can buy the cheapest ■■■■ box you can find but sometimes you end up spending more than you actually paid for it.
Yeah a personal loan for travel sounds stupid & something the lender probably shouldn’t have done (without knowing the persons other credit & employment history) but prior to a home loan, a personal loan for a car or to furnish your 1st move from home is fairly common. The other & IMHO best use of personal loans is to consolidate debt. Young couples saving for a home loan are so much better off consolidating their combined credit card debts into a personal loan that they can pay off at much lower % rates. Its quite common for younger people to acquire high debt to income ratios as they often have less stable employment & less conservative spending habits. trying to pay off credit card debts can be difficult & ultimately hurt their chances of getting a home loan so a personal loan addresses both. Those “12 months interest free” sales for big appliances is another trap a lot of people get stuck in & a personal loan can tidy this up.
Like Aceman points out you need to get the banks to work for you as much as possible. I moved my home loan several times when they used to offer “honeymoon rates”. Back then I think it was 1.5% less than the standard & although there were fees, I worked out we were ultimately thousands in front. I just changed my business credit card because although the fees were more, the extra points equal about $800 extra in value (I mostly cash mine in for vouchers). People spend a lot of time working to earn money & very little time getting their money to work for them. Banks are not exactly helpful in telling you what they can offer but if you push & look around there are ways to get better deals.
Excellent point consolidating the debts.
What do you (or others) use for this purpose?
Wise decision.
The new home loans with Government approval and the banks are wringing their hands with glee. With a very low deposit, the loan will never be paid off by just paying regular payments and the interest will keep growing like Jack’s beanstalk. What Australia doesn’t need is more credit card debt. When interest rates eventually rise and it will happen eventually; how many people will go to the wall? I read something the other day, it said we have the worst credit card debt in the world and 15% of people are in mortgage stress already.
Yes the next 12 months or so are going to be financially interesting.
As it is now self funded retirees and the ones who are taking the whack. As the cash rates heads south. How are self funded retirees supposed to live? I guess they just go on a part pension. Australia is in a financial mess and the less debt anyone has - the better off they’ll be. Scary actually.
I use Citibank Plus and when I looked into it a couple of years ago it was this and 28 Degrees which stood out. Can’t recall why I went with Citibank though. Has served me well.
Except they’ve tightened up lending conditions over the past 5 years, and interest rates keep dropping.
Others: ANZ Travel Adventures, uBank (debit)
I found only 28 degrees gives you the spot rate whereas the others usually take a cent or two off.
The ones the banks issue are a joke
That seems like a lot of effort just for a few free tickets. Then again I’ve never had a credit card so I don’t really get them.
Very little effort surprisingly, yeah some of the CC applications can take a few days and numerous phone calls but it’s fairly pain free. And the few free tickets are massive. Just recently we did 1st class Singapore to Sydney which normally costs $6k each and cost us 85,000 points each. We are currently looking for first class award flights from Sydney to Europe for next year and they are selling for $15k each return or we could use 520k points.
I’ve never added up what we have saved but have had numerous business class flights to Europe for free on Cathay, Emirates and Qatar and even domestically it comes in handy for points upgrades