The name of the card has clearly too many symbols and arguably too many syllables, but when the daily financial news is consistently dire, I should just be happy to see something that is this innovative and attractive.
It’s a credit card that gives you free money for investing.
Of course, we at Consumerism Commentary always recommend against carrying a balance on a credit card from month to month (incidentally, so does Dave Ramsey, who proves it by not accepting them on his Web site), but if you’re put together enough to literally take advantage of a credit card’s bonus features, check this out:
- Unlimited 2% “cash” back on purchases
- the cash is actually a deposit made into a Charles Schwab brokerage account
- no minimum purchase or annual fee
See more details at MarketWatch.
I’m not a Charles Schwab customer, so I don’t know what kind of investment options you get when you sign up for the card. For example, maybe you’re limited to mutual funds with front-end load fees. Hopefully someone can help out in the comments below.
Anti-disclaimer: This is not an advertisement. I honestly found this when looking at the news and thought it was compelling enough to write about.
I’ve been naughty.
I went a little nuts a few weeks ago and bought a whole bunch of audio/visual equipment. I didn’t do this just for fun, though. It’ll probably end up looking like an investment someday.
I got a mixer and a bunch of microphones that we’re going to use to create alternative movie commentaries. The commentary tracks will be for sale, but of course there’s no way of knowing whether it’ll be profitable. I tried to find a cheap way of doing this, but the sound quality would’ve suffered. For what it’s worth, I did buy the “scratch n’ dent” mixer for $40 less than it would’ve been. And the microphones were a good value. You can pay hundreds of dollars for a good microphone, but I found mine for $50. Of course, I bought three of them, so… Also, I needed a pop filter and a desk stand for each of them. Those weren’t free.
Since I had already decided to be naughty, I also bought a new video camera. I already had one that provided a pretty good quality image, but the sound was just awful. It’s a small consolation, but I sold the old camera for $90 to help pay for the new one, which was about $650.
All of this went on a credit card, of course. That’s why I say I’ve been naughty. I didn’t pay for it up front with money that I’d saved.
But you know what? My friends and I got together this past weekend to record our first commentary, and we had a lot of fun. Maybe the novelty will wear off, maybe it won’t, but I’m starting to think that it wasn’t quite so naughty, after all.
In other news, I accepted a job offer at a new place that will be paying me a little over $9,000 more per year than my current employer. I figure that should mean an additional $600 per month, so my credit card debt will be paid off even faster. More importantly, I think I will love working at the new place. Aside from the work itself (Information Architecture, Usability) which I have a lot of fun with, I had a couple of extended interviews with some of my future co-workers, and I think we’ll get along great.
Naturally, Apple came out with updated notebook computers yesterday, and I’m thinking of upgrading…
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