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this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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I have a card that has a built in pay later option with two modes:
Have a financing option that's split evenly and you have to pay it back each month to avoid it being treated as a missed payment and having interest applied.
A special option that has no monthly payments at 0% apr, but must be payed in full by the end of the deferred period or missed payment + interest and they apr retroactively jumps to something absurd
The statement tells you if you have something registered under the latter (I have used that option) but doesn't list the date it is due by from what I've seen.
I do use the latter pretty often, mainly because it's bailed me out once or twice when my family has had an emergency and I had to help throw money at a problem til it went away and I avoided interest in the interim, but generally I pay it back immediately since seeing the number stresses me out.
It's basically setup for exploiting those that either aren't financially literate or banks on someone that is trying to play the system for its benefits hitting a rough patch right around when a payment is due then eating their lunch money.
Edit: Also wanted to say the only reason I'm even willing to play the stupid game is because I had a weird finance obsession in my late teens and have a really good credit score as a result which acts as a secondary backup. I was able to bail out my bail out using that the one time I was in a really solid spot with a 2 year 20ish point drop by adding a new card and abusing its promo apr stuff. I have a family member that has low credit due to an incident from a while back and basically all of these options for recovery are closed off to them. Not only that, but learning it also requires a decent amount of time and research, assuming you already have some of the underlying knowledge to do so effectively.
for sure. I was in a jam as a young adult once and got into some trouble with CC debt. not astronomical, but managed to run up about $6k worth of debt while unemployed. took me a lot longer to dig myself out than it did to get myself in, of course, and it was an instructive experience on how belt tightening is as much a critically useful skill as understanding the sort of retail financial products offered to regular people and how to decide to use which ones for what purpose.
maybe 10 years later I was in dire circumstances again, but the hole i dug was far more manageable, and I used a combination of student loans debt + a debt balance transfer mediated through a credit union to pop out rapidly, only converting a small fraction of it (at high interest) to a much lower interest subsidized loan.
credit is the primary tool capitalists use to grow their wealth, but it requires a significant investment of time and energy to understand how and when to wield it so it helps you, because the general / default form of retail credit being promoted to us is full of traps.
having that tactical experience/understanding and the strategic understanding of Graeber's book on debt changed my self understanding of debt pretty significantly. because rejecting the taking on any and all forms of debt is understandable, but is also disempowering when stuck operating in this capitalist hellacape.