Honestly, we're crap at saving too, so when we bought our fridge interest free on a c/c - it was like forced savings. But you have to stick to your plan, the second you treat it as if its money to spend another day, is when things go downhill.
Honestly, i wouldn't recommend it. If you're going to give it to FIL to look after, why not give FIL $100 every week or fortnight and he can save it for you? It's hard to save, we struggle too, but so worth it if you can make it work.
I've had a CC for 10 years now and i still have a ?0 balance every month. I've paid interest once, when mum was dying and i had to buy 2 open-end train tickets on 20mins notice, and could only afford to pay half off when the bill came in because it happened to be 3-days before the end of the balance "month" when i bought them - i think i paid about 14GBP in interest that time. The rest of the time i have always paid it off immediately - i am so organised!
I got it because i was going abroad backpacking and it was still hard to use debit and UK bank cards abroad in those days, so i got a Visa and transferred 600GBP onto it BEFORE i went away, so i could spend 600 before i was borrowing anything. In the event i think i had 50 left on it when i got home, so i didn't actually "use" the credit, just the mechanism. The only regular purchase i've ever made was Broadband, right after i moved when i was on welfare and couldn't use direct debit to pay (because every company in the UK does it's direct debits monthly, but the UK government pay their benefits 4-weekly, so you can never use the direct debit payments and are effectively charged, since you don't get the DD discounts, for being poor - RANT!) and i knew i could always definitely pay by the end of the month. Again, i never paid a penny of interest.
When DP and i moved in together recently we used his CC to buy our suite - 1500, and again, paid immediately. We used the CC because so many companies are going bust just now and his CC guaruntees our money back if the firm goes under before the goods arrive...
It is VERY VERY easy to get into a mess with a CC. If you're not good at saving it might be better to be realistic and sort that out than get a credit card. Even very cheap purchases at the time can spiral once interest begins to be calculated. I have a friend who was known in uni as a bargain queen but used a CC. I can remember once she was boasting that she'd bought a pair of jeans in a sale, 23GBP down from 75GBP. But later on when she saw a financial advisor about her debts he calculated how long it'd taken her to pay off the jeans then worked out and added the interest and those 23 quid jeans actually COST her 191 pounds! So bear that in mind - if you want a $800 washing machine, do you want to pay $1200 for it because you couldn't keep on top of the interest? Or would you rather save up and get the $1200 machine in the first place?
Credit cards can be very useful, but they are an incredibly short term solution to the problem. Learning to budget and save well will mean you'll almost never need that short-term solution anyway.
I agree with Bx. CC's are very useful if you can budget and are great to have around in case of emergencies but as an alterative to saving they are deadly.
Saving is a fantatsic life skill that will serve you well if you can get on top of it.
I'll talk to DF about saving again. I am trying my best but because I pay the rent and a few other things and his bills are food, electricity, water (waiting for that one to arrive), internet and phone, they are all monthly or quarterly, except for food. Mine is weekly and fortnightly, and its hard to keep up when he's not giving me enough money. I think I currently have about $50 in the bank and I don't get paid centrelink for another week. I'm not going to get a CC until I am able to pay it back. I will talk to DF and hope that he sees where I am coming from.
Registered User
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks