No wonder I’m losing money right now…

2008-07-02T22:21:42-07:00

USA Today had an article a few days ago about the recession that we seem to officially be in. It’s pretty shocking.

For example, here’s a fact from the article: The Dow Jones had its biggest June loss since the great depression.

And another: The U.S. stock market has lost $2.1 trillion in value this year - $1.4 trillion in June alone.

For perspective that’s 15.2% of the 2007 estimated GDP.

The $10,000 scam

2007-10-16T23:53:44-07:00

Here’s the concept: You get a 0.0% APR credit card, and you see how high of a limit they’ll give you. You wait for the balance transfer checks to arrive in a week or two, and you write yourself a check for the amount of the credit limit. You invest that money for as long as the card remains at 0.0% APR. When that period is up, you pay off the card, and the game ends.

In my case, that was a total of $10,000, and one year, so if I find a place to invest that $10,000 at, say, 5%, I make $500 over the course of a year, all at no cost.¹ ²

Now, here’s where things get a bit tricky…I’m not satisfied with 5%, so I decided to invest it in a mutual fund, half as an experiment, half cause the odds were indeed in my favor. My risk was doing well…I was up…and then, this happened with no explanation.

Any ideas out there as to what happened? I still have six months before I have to pay Visa back, but nevertheless, this is annoying.

¹ If you don’t read footnotes, this game is not for you.

² Two things to bear in mind here. One is to get a card with no balance transfer fees. The other is that your credit score will take a temporary hit during this ordeal (but I have it on good authority that it will recover quickly).

Michael Jay Lissner

No wonder I’m losing money right now…

The $10,000 scam