• Rookwood@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    My credit card offers 0% interest on terms 3-12 months with any purchase over $75. You also often get offers like this at checkout for most online purchases these days. I would hope that’s where most of this is coming from.

    They’re a “good deal.”

    The catch is budgeting for this. It’s very easy to have these little purchases snowball on you if you do it for literally everything like is being pushed by creditors. If you don’t take the full amount of the purchases out of your budget, and then spend that extra cash, then all of a sudden next month when you’ve got a $200 payment due on groceries and your Amazon purchase, you’re short. Then you can’t pay your credit card in full, and have to roll over the balance and start paying interest. That’s the game they’re playing here.

    Do this over several months and the payments can really add up quickly. If you don’t have an actual budget process, you can get yourself in a bind really quickly.