I received a new 0% credit card from MBNA and closed out my old one. This time I have 15 months to pay it back and the limit went from $20k to $30k. Most of the money will go to TFSAs and RRSP contributions.

[...] might include putting all debts on a line of credit, home equity loan or a 0% credit card transfer. Some people prefer to take all of their debts and consolidate them to one large loan. This is what [...]

[...] I wrote about credit card arbitrage before, I came to the conclusion that the strategy wasn’t worth it due to the thin spread [...]

Without being specific, I would caution anyone who cares about his financial well being to use extreme caution employing any of the strategies used on this page.

Timing is everything, as is the no fee & no carrying charges Arbitrage.

I’ve used it, but unlike Frugal mentioned on writing a cheque to yourself it is generally considered a cash advance … & does not always work that way, for free anyway.

One option I used was to go out with CC 1 and purchase something big. I did this at $13k, I went to the Sony store and bought $13k of the most expensive home entertainment equipment there is.

Having the pre approved MNBA zero 12 months interest card ready to go, when the bill came in on CC1, I did the balance zero interest, no-fee transfer to CC2 12-months.

Within 2-weeks of all of this I returned the purchased items to the Sony store (policy return for full refund) and they weren’t too pleased, however, CC 1 had a credit of 12K. I called CC1 company and said “close my account” and send me the money.

Now $13k in hand for one year, what do I do?

Timing is everything … and I did this twice

Example one: December time frame, maxing on RRSP’s (since I hate these, unless I can profit from the exercise)I slapped $10k into an RRSP daily interest account with TD.

Early January I took $10k out in $5k lots, (minus the 10% witholding tax)giving me $9k, not forgetting I have $1k of tax credits, but will have to deal with reporting the $10k RRSP withdrawal next year.

With that $9k + $1K from the $3k left from the CC1 closedown, this time I slapped $10k back into the RRSP again, putting this time into the Questrade RRSP (fee free) trading account. What I used the $10k for to get more OPM’s and further tax savings/refunds, I shall tell you later.

Now I have a $20k RRSP deduction, which in my case provided a refund of $8k in early April… always efile

I still have $2k of cash from the CC1 return, $8k from a tax refund, totals $10k … What should do with that $10k before year end, should I stick it in mut-funds, do the SM manouvre, pay down the mortgage and increase the HELOC …

Since I dislike paying taxes, dislike paying others to manage my money from the likes of financial institutions, stock brokers, FA’s and the Mutfund companies, all IMO since I’m frugal, take their service charges, broker fees and MER’s on my behalf and all of whom are not responsible for the downside of my portfolio. There are no guarantees I’m told by all of these people.

My initial financial goal (since I work for an employer)was to see if I could get all of the income tax money back that was taken from my wages at source and get this back using the Aribitrage method (starting out with zero & using OPM)then working my way up to building equity and hopefully getting a low interest lown that is even more leverageable.

This one method allowed me to build my own version of frugal’s million dollar journey, adapting and already using many of the articles discussed in Frugals web-blog

TBC

[...] Play the credit card arbitrage game (note: this is too risky for my tastes) [...]

Yes, the 1% interest is tax deductible. But you must also pay taxes on the 4% you earned in the savings account.

[...] @ Moneyspot.org Grad Money Matters: Credit Card Arbitrage (Plus an Image of the $2,000 we Made…) Credit Card Arbitrage I – What is it? | Million Dollar Journey I guess I just feel like it’s too good to be true. __________________ A Dollar a [...]

[...] FrugalTrader05:00 amAdd comment Canadian Dollars asked a question on the Credit Card Arbitrage thread about the affect that canceling a credit card has on your credit [...]

[...] FrugalTrader05:00 am14 Comments In Sept, I wrote about Credit Card Arbitrage in Canada.  Since writing that article, App-o-Rama.org has contacted me to do a paid review of their [...]

[...] the site- oh, the ravages of age!) but Million Dollar Journey writes on making money through credit card arbitrage.  One issue with this technique is that you need a lot of available credit to really make money off [...]

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