Stay out of debt. Save money and pay for what you buy with cash, not credit.
0% APR is awesome when you have the money to afford whatever it is you're buying. You can float the debt at no cost while you put the funds into a CD or Treasury Bill earning interest.
For example, a $30,000 car at 0% interest allows you to invest that $30,000. In Treasury Bills paying 2% you would earn $1,475 interest over the 5 years you make payments on that loan.
I probably should have put that in the OP. Debt slavery is one of the biggest plagues on humanity.
I got started using credit cards fairly young. Never missed a payment, never bought anything I couldn't afford. I've only ever used credit cards as debit cards, to make random purchases I'd otherwise make with cash. Never did any financing or kept a balance.
That's terrible advice. If you have access to a low-interest tax-deductable loan (a mortgage) you'd be stupid to pay in cash. The money you don't have to front can be invested.
I took out 500k a mortage at 3.75%. My tax backet pushes me into the 35% federal tax. All interest on that mortgage can be deducted so that effectively reduces the mortgage interest rate to around 2.4%. Reinvesting that 500k in a low-risk etf should easily be able to return more than 2.4% after taxes. Not only that, but given the 30 year duration of the loan that's quite a bit of time for inflation to chip away at the loan. If we cruise at 3% inflation in ten years that debt goes down by 27% at 4% it goes down by 36%.
There is literally no reason to drain your savings instead of taking out a mortgage.
Lot of really good practical advice here. Covers almost everything I was going to say already anyway in one form or another, so I'll just add this one little thing, because I haven't seen it anywhere else on here:
Never fry bacon in a skillet while nekkid. Just trust me on this one.
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