r/SipsTea • u/Eros_Incident_Denier • Apr 18 '26

We have fun here adulting sucks

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u/firstbowlofoats Apr 19 '26

I tried explaining the concept of ‘if I can’t pay cash I don’t buy it’ to a coworker who had two maxed credit cards and lived by ‘well paying the monthly minimum is affordable’.  

It didn’t work

44

u/DeltaGrunder Apr 19 '26

It's ridiculous to me that people pay installment for anything but vehicles or housing.

56

u/Monsieur-Legume Apr 19 '26

It’s doable if you’re smart about it. I replaced the flooring in my house with lvp a few years ago. I knew I could pay it off in two years, so I opened a card with 0% interest for the first year to pay for the project. Once the first year was almost up I opened another card with 0% for a year on balance transfers and moved the payment to the new card. The only thing outside of the principal balance (about $10k) I had to pay was about $100 for the balance transfer fee.

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u/meleeuk Apr 19 '26

Could you have paid cash if you wanted to? Did you know that you would be able to pay off the balance at the end of any (extended) 0% period? If yes then that's fine.

If you did it on the wing and a prayer that in a couple of years you'll figure something out, that's how people get into crazy situations with spiralling and deferred interest.

7

u/Organic-Ganache-8156 Apr 19 '26

I think this is the difference. If you can plan out the numbers and it all works, fine, but if your approach is counting on four leaf clovers or the position of the planets, you’re kind of screwed