I may have to carry a balance, for the first time ever

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

bad idea. call the hospital give them his tax returns and see what discounts you can get. DO NOT put this on your cards! 

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When you live together in a  long term permanent relationship your money and expenses go together. Many times nowadays insurance doesn't pay everything.  That is what credit is for, to pay for things over time that require more cash than you have on hand.

[Anonymous]

Yes I am well aware of that for myself actually.

But that doesnt mean you cant use this to your advantage and try to work the system a little bit. See if they can work with you on the balance or maybe do a sliding income. Unless he makes 250 grand a year, which if he did u wouldnt be on here paying his bills, then at least try please.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Yes I am well aware of that for myself actually.

But that doesnt mean you cant use this to your advantage and try to work the system a little bit. See if they can work with you on the balance or maybe do a sliding income. Unless he makes 250 grand a year, which if he did u wouldnt be on here paying his bills, then at least try please.

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We definitely don't make anywhere near 250k! The bill wasn't astronomical, just over 1k after his insurance paid. I got a 25% discount for paying it today, at once. I didn't ask about any type of income based discount though. I could have paid it in cash, but I thought, why take money out of savings (where it is earning interest) when I could put it on Discover for 0% and also get the 2% cash back? Was my reasoning wrong? He has the cash to pay me back for it today, I just need to get it out of the safe. And I wasn't going to pressure him to pay it all right now, since he lost his job last week (due to this illness).

[Anonymous]

I guess I didn't title the thread appropriately. I should have said that I may choose to carry a balance, for the first time ever, instead of that I have to. I don't actually have to do it, but I may choose to carry few dollars over.

Even though it is a relatively small amount, I feel odd about it. I am so used to paying in full all the time, that carrying a balance makes me feel like I am doing something wrong.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I guess I didn't title the thread appropriately. I should have said that I may choose to carry a balance, for the first time ever, instead of that I have to. I don't actually have to do it, but I may choose to carry few dollars over.

Even though it is a relatively small amount, I feel odd about it. I am so used to paying in full all the time, that carrying a balance makes me feel like I am doing something wrong.

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sorry. when you said medical bills i got scared. 25 percent off is a good deal. you are fine. apologies.

[Anonymous]

as long as you can pay it off before your promotional ends, there's nothing wrong with carrying balance. Hell, my brother let's his balance post every month, and yet his scores went over 800 last month, so don't be afraid to carry balance if you need to.

[creditguy-378]

it wil be alright that is what they are for if you needd to use it

[Anonymous]

Glad you got 25% off. I call to haggle on medical bills as well, and I never worry about carrying a balance on 0% offers. I just stay well aware of the ending of promotional periods, and budget to the dime monthly to be sure I never pay interest. I prefer keeping cash in savings if there's 0%, and sometimes, one just needs a buffer period in a pinch. I hope he's feeling better soon!

[Anonymous]

Luckily, this was a false alarm. Boyfriend paid me in full for his hospital bill and I have already paid off my card, so no balance carrying today. By using my card I was able to save him about $300 on the bill and earn about $16 in cash back for me, so I guess it worked out for the better. I do have four cards with 0% promos right now, so maybe I won't be so nervous if I really do decide to use those sometime. Thanks for your advice and comments, everyone! I appreciate all of your input.

[takeshi74]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I assume I will see a drop in scores temporarily for utilization. Can I expect any other side affects from this?

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It mainly depends on the impact to your utilization though there may be a small hit for having a balance report on a card that was previously not reporting a blaance.  That said, unless you were paying the card down to 0 prior to report date it was reporting a balance even if you were paying in full.  Payments made after the report date but by the due date do not reduce the reported balance since the balance had already reported.

You can do the utilization math to see how much your overall and individual utilization would change but we can't tell you that you'd see an impact of X points.

You'll lose your grace period but if you have 0% on purchases that doesn't matter.  If you were subject to interest you'd have to deal with residual interest even after paying it off.  However, neither of those directly affect score.  The impact would be to utilization.  "Utilization has no memory" is quite often stated here but bucketing is possible and it does happen to some.  It's not "memory" per se but it does mean that it can take a little while for the reduction in utilization to show its effect.

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@Anonymous wrote:

I could have paid it in cash, but I thought, why take money out of savings (where it is earning interest) when I could put it on Discover for 0% and also get the 2% cash back? Was my reasoning wrong?

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Nope.  Your savings is probably not accruing that much interest but it's more than the 0% you'd be charged on your Discover and it's probably less than the 2% you'd get with charging it on Discover.  If you didn't have 0% then it would probably make more sense to rely on a liquid cash reserve.