Yes best card ever !

been getting treatpoints + cash rebates very often....

Mostly are asking to swipe at least once a month to get annual fees waiver.

My take is if you don't use your credit card at least once a month, why bother getting a credit card?

There are some good personal loans out there offer cash at a much lower rate than credit card. Why don't you try that?

14k is not a lot.

Thanks but I don't want to create another "bad" debt. Since my savings is more than enough to cover the debt, I'll just pay it off.

Use of personal loan to cover credit card debt is the most stupid idea ever.

Do the IRR calculation to get the real EFFECTIVE interest rate on personal loan and you will know.

Bank rakyat is offering personal loan down to 5% per annum. Flat rate.

If someone has no cash to cover his credit card bills and only able to pay the minimum amount, I don't think you need a calculator to determine the effective IRR.

Edit: Bank islam I meant.

This post has been edited by td00164306: Sep 12 2014, 02:09 PM

Just in case u did not know, flat rate is not the same as effective rate. Here is a simple chart for u

Flat rate of 5% is the below effective rate, depending on tenure
1 yr - 9.1%
2 yrs - 9.32%
3 yrs - 9.31%
5 yrs - 9.15%
10 yrs - 8.69%
15 yrs - 8.29%
20 yrs - 7.95%

It's still mostly above your ASB and not worth to take it to settle your loans

Credit card has the highest interest rate... that's why we should try to convert any credit card debt to a personal loan, if the loan has a lower rate.

(Not too sure whether there's any fees or extra charges when applying the loan.... so need to take this fees into account if any...)

Looking it in another way, the flat rate in a personal loan would have to be about 10% to be higher than the credit card rate of 18%

To pay a balance of $10,000 on a credit card, by paying a monthly sum of $650, you will pay it off in 18 months, and had paid a total interest of $1,455.13.

Using an online calculator, a comparable monthly installment is:
10% flat rate, 18 monthly payments of $647.22, total interest of $1,500.00, and effective interest rate of 18.17%.

The flat rate conversion calculator at this link: http://loanstreet.com.my/calculator/flat-t...h.ewuejaEb.dpbs


I think you mean to say it is not worth to take a personal loan to invest.

(.... and misread his point... the minimal payment of a 10k balance is only 5% or $500, and will take 89 payments and a total interest of $4,054.96. This is stated on the back of my cc statement... a sort of required notice by bank negara?)


===============

FOLKS,

NEVER USE CREDIT CARD as a sort of AUTOMATIC PRE-APPROVED loan.

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Sep 12 2014, 03:01 PM

Don't compare with PLs offered to government servants, my calculations were based on PLs available to normal folks.

The effective rate of PLs are higher than CC's IF u pay on time every month i.e. u do not hit the highest interest rate bracket.

Try calculate yourself

In this case, he has 30k worth of cash in ASB and a 16k credit card debt.

So what I meant to say was that he should use the ASB to pay of the debt instead of a personal loan.

Also, many credit cards have way lower than 18%, in his case it was 15%. If I'm not wrong, MBB2 Amex is only 8.88%.

=)

So what's the normal PL, higher than the 10% flat rate I shown as an example?

Had never taken any personal loan (yet)... but always got calls from the bank people offering to credit cash into my account, and the offers were getting lower and lower from about 6% down to less than 5%.

===============

Okay, let's say you can pay on time every month... and the interest rate is 15%
Again using the online calculate, we need to hit 8.2% to get 15.01% effective interest.


I think the person you reply to was on another topic already...

errr.. me still here..

"Normal" PLs flat rate from 0.75-1% per month, that works out to 9-12% p.a. FLAT, if calculate effective rate, sure higher than credit card lower brackets.

good... now, I have to turn back one page to see what's what.

It was not you, but that person with strings of numbers I was referring to. I was in agreement with him on Pink's general blanket statement about some stupid thing to do, without qualifying it with what's the flat rate PL that will make it higher than cc rate.

Now reading back your initial post, I see that I did not touch on the 2nd cc that you intended to convert to PL. Well, you will need to calculate the effective rate of the PL to know whether it is worth to do so or not...

so, what's those calls I got... the last offer was 4.5%... no documents required... just say yes over the phone, and $10k will be credited into my account... scams or offers to entice people who don't need PL at all...

... and so high interest for those who really need a loan.

Haven't u heard before...banks won't offer loans to ppl who really need it, they only offer loans to ppl who don't need it (but those whom bankers view as potential good paymasters)?

That's the banks way of suckering ppl.

Offer you a loan u don't need = free money. New sales.

Nett income: RM4.5k

House rent: 1.3k
Car loan: 836
Credit card: 600 (untill CC clear, might probably take 6-8 months)
Parents: 500
Phone bills: 100
Transportation:400
Savings: 400
Misc: 400

I am planning to buy a house soon, but still need to save money for the downpayment. Any advice from sifus? tq

This post has been edited by iamloco: Sep 12 2014, 07:01 PM

Some answers were already there in the recent posts... if not obvious enough, to recap:

1. You don't pay the minimal amount on cc. You pay as much as you can. So why the savings of 400?

2. Spending first, then savings, then investments... be prudent in your spending... the 400 misc, is that food? If it is, you spend 400 on food, but 1300 on lodging?

3. On buying a first house, a rule of thumb I used was 20% savings, another 10% or 15% from EPF, housing loan 65-70% with tenure of not more than 20 years. This to avoid paying too much interest, and overspending on a house.

(Before some argue that no house can be found using this budget criteria, then too bad... lower your expectations with a cheaper house/apt/hut... or keep renting.)

so true... and was so tempted to get this 'free' money to invest... that I was not thinking at that time of flat rate vs. effective rate, when the 4.5% was mentioned.

Finally, did not take up the offer because can't think of any 10k investment that will immediately give back $500 every month.