Make Money Off Credit Cards

Anyone who has ever had excessive credit card debt will tell you to stay as far away from credit cards as you possibly can!  Thing is, there are a few ways that you can leverage the promotional offers of credit cards to actually benefit from the credit card companies- and actualy make money off the credit card company.

If you decide to try this method, you really want to make sure you read the fine print of your promotional offers carefully, because they are all slightly different and if you make a mistake, you're going to end up paying money instead of earning it!

Zero Percent Balance Transfer Checks

From time to time, credit card companies will send you a 0% balance transfer check offer.  You want to check to see that you are allowed to deposit the check into your bank account for extra cash, and make sure you understand when the promotion ends and you have to pay back the balance to avoid the hefty interest rates the company is sure to charge beyond that date.

Once you're sure the offer allows you to deposit the money into your account to qualify for the 0% balance transfer (some credit card companies will consider that a cash advance, and you'll be billed at the highest level of interest so definitely be sure to check into this carefully!) you can write yourself a check in the full amount that you're allowed- and then immediately transfer that money into a high yield interest savings account, where you can earn interest for the entire promotional period on the credit card's money.  Before the promotional period ends, just transfer out enough money to cover the original deposit (leaving the interest in your account) and write a check to pay off the credit card company.

How much could you earn?  It all depends on how long you can keep the credit card's money in your account and how high the interest is.  If you deposited $2000 into an HSBC Direct account for 12 months at their current interest rate of 5.05%, you would earn $101 in interest!  If you deposited $10,000 into the HSBC Direct account for the same length of time you would earn $505 in interest- not bad for a couple hours of work, applying and transfering money, right?  (The money you earn in interest is taxed, so you'll have to account for that out of your earnings, but it's still quite a large sum of money that you didn't have to do much to earn.)

Cash Back Credit Cards

Another technique of making money off the credit cards money is to get a quality cash-back credit card.   A quality cash back credit card is one that doesn't charge an annual fee, and has a reasonable interest rate with a long enough grace period that you can make your repayments before interest and finance fees are applied to your purchases.

Once you find a good cash back credit card offer, you can use it to make all of your regular purchases- that doesn't mean to go out and buy a big screen television or other large ticket luxury items- but to wisely use a cash back credit card you could use it to make your every day purchases (groceries, gas, pharmacy, office supplies, etc) and before the finance charges and interest is applied, repay each month's purchases.  You'll earn the cash back but because you make your payments quickly to avoid fees, it's the same as buying with cash.