I’m actually surprised that I was asked on whether or not I know any “evil” ways that people use to procrastinate in paying one’s credit card bills. I have always been a person who pays my credit card bills in full every month so I never tried things such as people using a different credit card in order to pay another for example. Out of humour I was trying to think if there was a crazy thing people could do though.

Just to be clear too, it’s best to just clear your debt as I personally believe when it comes to credit cards if you can’t afford the product then you shouldn’t be using credit to buy it in the first place as that means you simply can’t afford it. Thinking back I do remember one thing that I kind of noticed by accident when it came to paying off my monthly bill. Essentially, there was a time I made a big purchase where I ended up having to exchange the product. This resulted in having to return the product to the store and then purchasing another one. So as usual in your statements you would get credit for the return purchase and then charged a new transaction for the new purchase.

The funny thing I noticed is that the credit I received from the refund actually acted as a payment for my most recent statement. So if you think about it, this kind of postpones my previous month’s bill to next month. Theoretically you can continue the cycle with the way a lot of credit cards work. However, the merchants are the ones that would get hammered with the credit card fees.

Here is a more clear example. Let’s say your credit card billing cycle is on the 15th of every month and your bill was $500. Afterwards they give you say until the the 1st day of the next month to pay the bill or you will accumulate interest charges. Now let’s say on the 16th you purchased like a TV for $500 just to then return it a day later. Assuming there is no delay in the process, on your card it will be posted as a $500 credit. A lot of card companies don’t differentiate it. Therefore, while you obviously still have to pay $500 eventually, right now the statement acts as if that $500 credit paid off your previous month’s bill. Now the bill looks as if you have to pay for that TV still by the next deadline.

Obviously this won’t be true in every case such as if the card company actually separates credit versus an actual bill payment. At the same time, I suppose reasons like this is why many businesses implement things like a “restocking fee” as it does cost them money to do the transaction. That is the only real “evil” way I can think of though in terms of people trying to purposely delay a credit card payment while trying to avoid fees. Again though, you should just be paying them off in full every month. At the same time, as the business owner it is difficult to implement a way to stop people from doing that without having whatever policy you are implementing not affect others as well.

Today I went to this restaurant that was near a family member’s house as we haven’t visited in awhile and so everyone decided to go to a restaurant. The first thing I noticed was that there was a sign on the door stating how they accept cash only. The first thing that came to my mind funny enough was whether or not the business did this so that they could evade paying their taxes as cash transactions are probably pretty hard to track. As well, the other thought was because they don’t have things like credit card terminals the operating cost of the business probably enables them to offer things for cheaper.

Indeed it was cheaper too as there were dishes like how you could order a whole lobster dish for about ten dollars as an example. I was thinking too that maybe they actually tried to fish/farm for a lot of their ingredients as a way to conserve money. It can be tricky though in terms of trust as even for myself when I see a cash only sign it makes me think that there is something shady about the business. It can be a good negotiation tool too where if people accept credit cards and you offer to pay cash only you can often get a discount as using a credit card costs the business a lot of money.

I was reading this tidbit that wasn’t too surprising where there was an owner of a fitness club who was saying his industry/business had a profitable model where for the most part well over 50% of its customers never end up fully using their memberships. Most people drop out say after thirty days of usage.

That then just made me wonder where if instead of looking at it from a value point of view such as how $10 a month sound so cheap, how would you react if instead you looked at figures such as the dropout rates first? I’m sure that would help you put things in perspective to see if it is truly worth it for you or not. The same goes for spending money on programs that say promise you the moon on how you can learn something easy or can make you a lot of easy money. Looking at the raw data on how many people are successful helps a lot to make you see if it truly is a viable investment versus an emotional one.

You don’t even need too much industry specific knowledge to find these types of figures too as you can even simply just do generic searches on places like search engines and from there it will guide you in the right path to find the numbers you are looking for.

Recently I was reading some articles about that telecom company Globalive that is apparently in a very sticky situation as there was a court ruling that could pretty much stop them from doing any business here. That means anyone who is using its services will be left in the dust if that does turn out to be the case.

What is interesting about this I thought is that so many consumers simply don’t ever bother to read business related news as for the most part it seems boring. But you can imagine how this can affect you financially if say the company did die and then at the last minute you scramble to get new services as a result of it. Whereas if you did stay in the loop you could probably start having some kind of a backup plan.

Reading this kind of stuff is not just for say stock investors in my opinion. It keeps you updated on what is the best potential ways to spend and invest your money in general I say.

Today I received an e-mail from a wholesale distributor that had detailed information on what products manufacturers are going to be pushing to sell and to do so they are offering companies heavy discounts and incentives to do so. While I am not a reseller, seeing this list gives me an advantage on what items are going to fall in price in the future and if there is anything worth holding out for.

Another benefit to reading information like this is many times you can find out what the at cost price is for an item so that you can better determine if the prices you see at the stores are a good deal or not. I actually know some small businesses that actually sign up as resellers for various companies just for the sake of learning about upcoming deals even though they have no intention of actually buying things to resell. Course, I think it is better to just find sources such as newsletters that wholesalers offer.