Can anyone explain credit cards.
I want to get solar on the folks house. Can they get it on a credit card and then get another credit card and do a balance transfer to get it interest free for longer?
Using a Credit Card to pay for Solar Installation
HereToSave on 23/03/2022 - 22:01
Last edited 24/03/2022 - 07:37 by 1 other user
Last edited 24/03/2022 - 07:37 by 1 other user
Comments
of course!
If you go through some large company they do take credit card, not smaller one. I paid mine by credit card with Sunterra, I believe Solargain does too but those might change. But always make sure the price you pay is good, you don't want to be slugged 20% or 50% premium, I bet those door knocker solar would happily take your credit card too.
Sweet. The company I bought through are offering a pretty irresistible deal. $500 cheaper than I payed and I will get a kick back. I won’t say company as that’s for a different forum but I’m sure they’d take credit card. I’d just like to know more about the balance transfer processes.
Get the new card approved before you make the purchase on the old one.
Look out for introductory bt offers like 0% 3yrs etc, watch out for BT fees, and stack with cards that offer other sign up bonuses. Rinse and repeat at the end of each interest free period.
Your new card will also need to have a limit 10-20% higher than the purchase price.What is BT fee and why does it have to have a higher limit?
@HereToSave: Nominal fee (1-3%) charged for processing the balance transfer by new card issuer.
Generally balance transfer are capped at 80-90% of your card limit.
With new CC do they care past the credit limit? Mostly these days they just ask me what the limit is, not how much is on it.
Also need to do the BT at the time of signing up the card in most cases, it can't be done after. So it's important to know how much the solar install would be before signing up the new card.
Are you sure they are a reliable installer? Have you looked at their reviews on solarquotes?
I don’t trust solarquotes. I have had my system a year. It goes ok. Cheap, saves me money. All appears to be ok.
@Quantumcat: Comments I read on Facebook. It seems to be a bit biased at times. I put it in the same category as Finder and Compare the market. I’d rather do my own research.
Getting a CC without knowing anything about it could land you in big debts. There's plenty of info on various websites ie banks, choice etc. Make sure you do your own due diligence.
I have the cash to back it up. Just wondering if it’s a way of keeping said cash in my bank account until parents can pay it back.
If you have to do Solar on a Credit Card, then don't do it. It's honestly not worth it because you end up paying the same monthly payment on the credit card as what you save in Solar.
For Example, your power bill could be $200 a month currently. Solar Reduces it to $100 and then you need to pay the credit card off at $100 a month. Same cost, $200 a month. If you get an okay system as I did. 6.6kwh and it was $3,400. So you end up paying for the system for 3 years before it really has any saving benefits.
It's only helpful if you have the money to do it, rather than having to borrow to do it.
PS - This is just hypothetical without knowing the current running costs of the house etc. Everyone's circumstances are different. Take this advice as you wish.
I would have to disagree, as long as you're not paying interest. Solar for your house is one of the very best investments you can make. It will pay for itself in 3-5 years and continue giving you savings for another decade.
Using a credit card however would be dumb if you might end up paying interest. In that case a personal loan would be better, will push the payback period out but not as much as a credit card with a high interest rate
Solar for your house is one of the very best investments you can make.
I disagree with this. It has no alpha and the asymmetric bet is lower than other investment vehicles.
Using a credit card however would be dumb if you might end up paying interest. In that case a personal loan would be better,
Using any form of debt to buy it is NOT financially justifiable unless the debt and interest is tax deductible.
Being able to use it as a tax deduction only makes it a bit cheaper, it doesn't define whether something is worth doing or not. If the total savings are greater than the total cost (and there isn't another option that is easy to do that would provide a greater savings-costs figure) then it is worth doing.
@Quantumcat: There are plenty of other options that can provide better asymmetric returns within a 3Y to 5Y timeframe.
@rektrading: What other investment can you name that will give a guaranteed ~$20,000 return over its life on a $5,000 investment?
Crypto and risky stock market investments don't count, as they can go wrong. Would have to be something blue chip, term deposits, mortgage on investment property etc that someone with a single PPOR and no investment property can access.
The only one I can think of is voluntary contributions to super, but you don't get to see the returns for a very long time. At least with solar you get to see them by 3-5 years.
What other investment can you name that will give a guaranteed ~$20,000 return over its life on a $5,000 investment?
You know what my answer will be. It starts with a T S L and ends with an A.
Solar for your house is one of the very best investments you can make.
Crypto and risky stock market investments don't count, as they can go wrong.You've now changed the rules from "one of the very best investments you can make" to excluding investment vehicles that don't suit your risk profile.
@rektrading: one of the very best investments you can make if you own your home.
You can't say that crypto or risky stock market investments are better when one is a guaranteed return and the others are not (risky things always pay off more if they do pay off, but they could also result in your losing all or most of your investment, which solar can't).
I don't know what you mean by starts with tsl and ends in a. If you mean a Tesla, that costs a lot more than $5000.
@Quantumcat: I had the opportunity a while back to invest in PV or hard assets. I put the numbers down on a spreadsheet and worked out that PV over the lifetime of the warranty was low-risk, low return while hard assets were high-risk high return.
I chose to DCA in hard assets over installing PV. I then up the ante and went 99.99% in hard assets when the opportunity presented itself. It was the best financial decision I've made.
What other home improvements are directly comparable to installing solar?
I improved my home heating by investing in miners.
@noz: I'm sitting next to them in the study/WFH. I've gotten used to hum. The louder the hum the more money they make.
@rektrading: Feel free to correct my random number guesses here (if you have sources to back it up), but let's say a couple of GPUs for mining cost you $5000, and over a year it consumes $2000 worth of electricity and returns you $2500 in mined crypto. And you save $50 on electricity that doesn't go to your heater, but you spend $50 more on air conditioning in summer.
Next year the complexity of calculations in crypto mining goes up and you spend the same $2000 on electricity and only get $2100 back from mined crypto.
Then the next year the complexity goes up again and you actually get less mined crypto than what you spent on electricity. Now you have to buy new GPUs if you want to stay competitive, or figure out how to steal electricity from your neighbours or install the GPUs surreptitiously at work to use their power.
Compare that to spending $5000 on solar, and saving around $1500 a year, every year (say with slight declines down to 80% original capacity after ten or fifteen years).
Which do you think is the better investment?
@Quantumcat: I started mining when the spot price was ~$80.
You can look a the price today and make up your own mind if I made the right choice.
Hey, does your mummy know your on the internet?
you're
In days of yore, I might have let this slip but your comment stood out as particularly inane. You're welcome.
Taking out $1,000s in debt on 20% interest to get a few cents in FiT is a bad situation waiting to happen.
Pissing into the wind mate. You're on a website where most people have no sense of the time value of money (TVM).
ohh. That's why my skirt is wet.
Thanks.🤣
Yeah. Did it with our solar installation with a 15-month 0% interest card. Could have paid it upfront but better for the money to spend a little longer time in our offset account.
Thank you. This is what I want to do. No risk as the money is there to cover it. I just wonder about fees. 0% transfer sometimes isn’t 0%.
When we did this, we applied for the Bendigo low rate card. It had $49 annual fee but when we signed up there also was a $100 Woolies GC promo.
Looks like St. George is doing 12-months 0% interest on new purchases atm.
Alternative is finding a card that does 0% on purchases for xx months. For example, Coles (well, it's a white label Citibank card) are doing 0% for 12 months on their Rewards MC which has a $99 AF (but it also 30,000 Flybuys points worth $150 off at Coles).
Then you can balance transfer this at the end of the 12 months for more interest free period (but as above - watch out for BT fees, etc)
Thank you. I’ll try and find the BT fees.
Just use Afterpay.
and choose an installer that gives you Flybuys points.
Don't forget to click on Cashrewards.
Makes sense to put it in the mix. Thanks.
Don't forget to click on Cashrewards.
Thank you, Mr Troll.
Please find us a decent solar company here that is on Cashrewards or SB.
Look for new CC deals where you do $X spend within first 3 months.
I would only use CC, if I am getting a serious amount of reward points from the transaction. Even then, it would be capped per month.
So, I would spread the cost over multiple cards to maximise my points income.I was able to pay with a CC. They did charge me 1% fee though which was around $40. My cc bonus reward points were worth 700 so it made sense for me to pay the $40 fee
Good idea. I gave up on that plan. Thanks for your time.
Subbed because I'm curious to see this.