It comes down to what will bring you peace of mind. For me, I don't like having a bill waiting for me at the end of the month, so I pay for it at the time of purchase and am done with it.

Others will tell you to use the bank / credit card company's money while you keep yours socked away in an online account. From a financial standpoint, this makes more sense.

But from a risk standpoint, if you somehow are late or miss one payment, be prepared to pay all interest charges retroactive back to day one.

The risk to reward ratio just isn't there for me.

Also, home improvement, furniture and even some retail credit cards are often "frowned" upon by credit bureaus, which can lower your credit score.

This post was edited on 2/19/13 at 8:23 am

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Posted by NaturalBeam

Member since Sep 2007

14544 posts

Posted on 2/19/13 at 10:52 am to Will Cover

It depends on what else you will be doing with that $10k in the meantime. If it's earning you money (and not just some bullshite 0.1% savings account), or makes up a substantial part of your emergency fund or something, then just pay monthly. But if not, I would probably just pay it off, mainly b/c of this:

quote:
if you somehow are late or miss one payment, be prepared to pay all interest charges retroactive back to day one.

I did a 12 month promotional interest free purchase one time for about $5k. I made all payments timely and it worked out, but I was sweating bullets worrying about if my payment got lost in the mail each month or something. At the time, paying it all off wasn't an option, so I had to do it. But it's too nerve-wracking for me to do again if I can avoid it.

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