Insight From the Carmen Wong Ulrich Show

In the evenings, when I work on this blog, I usually watch some of the financial shows that come out on CNBC like the Carmen Ulrich show. On more than one occasion I herd viewers calling in with a very intriguing question. Several people called in with the greatest credit card offer in the world (at least it sounded like to me). Anyway, these people were being offered large cash advance sums like $25,000 to $50,000 with no interest for a year. The callers, wanted to know if they should take out that money and put it in a CD with a bank and earn some interest on it. I soon came to find out that the answer was absolutely not.

Credit card companies will entice cardholders with these great offers that have many strings attached. If for any reason you are late on any one of your payments, they will hit you with fines and raise your interest rate on that cash advance from 0% to 20%. Furthermore, once you lock money into a bank CD, you are always penalized for early withdrawals. If for some reason you suddenly need that money, you will loose money in penalties.

In my opinion, unless you have plenty of money for emergencies and pay your bill a few days before the due date online, you might want to give it a try. However, if you do have money, there are better ways of investing your money. There is too much risk for that introductory offer to change for whatever reason. I would definitely agree with Carmen and avoid making that kind of financial move.