Blunt Money

A new article is posted each day on Blunt Money, where you get plain talk about money and personal finance. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

We’ve all seen the offers: 0% interest for one year with a minimum purchase of $200, 90 days same as cash, no interest until next year, etc. So what incentive is there to save up for something that we want when we can get it now at no charge instead? Why wait when you can get it now?

There’s a reason that those types of offers are made. They are used to induce you to buy things that you wouldn’t otherwise buy today (if at all), and to buy them now, this weekend only! The companies aren’t losing money on those offers. They’re making money on them. The offers are used to generate a sense of urgency, with a bit of guilt-free outsmarting the system feeling thrown in to further tempt you to buy. Many people who take advantage of the offers end up paying a significant amount of interest because something unexpected comes up and they don’t pay the bill off on schedule.

Once you’ve accepted the offer, the lack of a minimum payment is also very tempting. It’s easy to tell yourself that you’ll make up the difference next month when you have more money, and to spend this month’s money on something that “came up” instead. This is exactly how many people wind up paying interest. They all had the best of intentions too. You never hear someone say “Oh I got this great new set of furniture on a 0% interest deal for one year, but I’m going to ignore something in the fine print and go ahead and pay the 23% interest they’ll charge later anyway!”. Everyone thinks they will be the exception. Most people are not. My contention is that if you can’t spend 3 months or a year saving up the money for something that you want, you probably can’t do what it takes to meet the requirements of the 0% interest program either. You’ll end up being charged a huge amount of interest for something that you may not otherwise have bought at all in the first place.

The biggest reason to avoid these types of offers when you don’t have the money is peace of mind. If you don’t owe someone money, you don’t have to worry about paying them, or about what might happen if you need to cut expenses. By all means take advantage of those no-interest offers when you already have the money and can pay it off in full anytime you want to, and when you’re intending to buy the product from the outset. Using someone else’s money for free while yours continues to earn interest is a smart thing. Just think twice about doing so when you don’t have the money.