A few years ago you could easily make a few bucks by getting a 0% credit card deal and putting the money in the bank at 5% but those days are gone. You are lucky to get 1% on your money now. And the credit card companies seemed to catch on to this trick and now have uncapped transfer fees of 3% to 5% to get your 0% money. I recently received a deal for 0% money for one year with only a 2% fee and decided that was good enough for me to make some money. Please note that I’m not recommending that anyone else do this.
The cost of the credit was $160 for $8000. My plan is to use about $3000 of this money to take advantage of bank bonus offers. I’ve already made $115 from a local bank bonus offer. I’ve also received the $25 Betterment.com bonus. A US Bank $50 bonus should be arriving shortly and I’ll receive another $50 bonus in one year. A $100 Sharebuilder bonus and $25 Discover Bank bonus are in the process of being earned. I still have about $1000 left to take advantage of other bonus offers. The bonus offers by themselves will cover the cost of borrowing the money.
Another $3000 of this money went into the stock market. I’m not a market timer but with the stock market dropping so much Thursday it looked to me that I could get some dividend stocks cheap. I put about $3000 in three stocks today and the stocks are already up. My plan it to keep the stocks and pay off this portion of the money from my monthly cash flow. If that doesn’t work out I’ll just sell one of my losing stocks for tax loss harvesting.
I’d like to use the remaining $2000 to buy another website. That might be a little crazy since I’m having trouble keeping up with the blogs I already own. Websites can be one of the best investments. When I bought MyRetirementBlog.com I was nervous about the amount of money I spent on it but I made about 75% of the purchase price back in the first year. The earnings have gone up since then and I’ve probably made more than the purchase price this year alone. If I can’t find a reasonably priced site I’ll just pay down the credit card loan or look for other investment opportunities.
If you have a personal finance blog or related website for sale or know someone who does please contact me.
Personally, I do not invest with borrowed money. I think it is too risky, particularly in this very volatile environment.l
I can understand that. It is not something I recommend people do.
It sounds like you have a well thought out plan at least. I would be interested in buying a website or two but really haven’t explored it in much detail. I have enough to do as it is right now.
Thanks. Finding a good website to buy is difficult. It isn’t looking like I’ll find a site to buy.
My friend used the same credit card – bank arbitrage strategy back when the market was different. I love bank bonus offers. Great way to earn easy money. 🙂
Yes, the strategy used to be much easier to do. I have a whole site dedicated to Bank Bonuses.
Never have idea to use the credit card to invest. I thought it is very dangerous but after read this article, I think it can be a very beneficial.
It is risky. You need to consider that before using this strategy.
That is very innovative! I never thought of putting credit cards to such use!
I agree with you, with the markets falling as much as it did last week, it might be a good idea to stock up on solid stocks.
Thanks, I’m hoping it is a good strategy.
Investing by using credit is risky. I do like your plan on buying a website, as I have done the same thing. Usually if you want to buy a website it takes a lot of research and to get a ‘good’ website that is actually making money will cost quiet a bit of money. I bought a website for $10k and have made almost 70% of it back. You just have to go into it knowing that its a long term investment, just like buying a house, but its virtual property. I gave myself 18 months to make my money back which I think I will beat that goal. Then anything above and beyond is pure profits, not to mention you can sell the website and make even more on your money.
It does take a lot of research to find a website. The website I buy doesn’t have to be making money as long as it has traffic and search engine results that make me think I can make money from it.
Those are gems, but hard to find. Its hard to find a website that has traffic and isn’t making money. If its got traffic and there are ads and and still isn’t making money, then I would question the website as to why it wasn’t producing. The website I bought for $10k I got from a major website buying/selling service. There are tons of junk websites out there.. maybe 95% of all being sold on that site were junk or ‘fake’, not making money. Then you have a bunch of people speculating on a website in hopes that it will be the next big thing.. so doing your research takes a ton of time and effort.. but once you find a good one.. then its worth it! Ive got a site with a bunch of number 1 rankings, making the principle back. I see buying websites kind of like buying a house, eventually I will get my principle back and then some!
There are definitely lots of junk sites on sites like Flippa. The site I bought was purchased directly from the owner and it was just luck that I heard he wanted to sell his site. I do sometimes find sites that appear to have been abandoned that still have PR and decent traffic but haven’t been able to get a response from the owners. I’m keeping my eye open for any future opportunities.
I think another way to get around fees, etc, would be to get one of the 0% for 12 months cards, and then just put all of your spending on there, and then keep your income from your paycheck each month to make money off of. And then pay the card off with that money at the end of 12 months.
There are still some high interest checking accounts out there, provided you meet some guidelines.
This would be very difficult to have the discipline to do so that you have the money ready to pay off the card at the end of the 0% interest rate period.
I do have a high interest checking account and your suggestion is another option I might use for a little bit of the money.