No Payments, No Interest

“No payments, no interest” deals are very common during the holiday season. More than half of the major retailers offering 0% financing on credit cards use a potentially financially dangerous feature called deferred interest, which can make holiday purchases up to 27.5 times more expensive than expected (source: WalletHub). This stems from “No Payments, No Interest for 6/ 9/ 12/ (etc.) Months!”

The rest of the story is when that time period is up, any remaining owed balance is hit with retroactive interest, which goes back to the original purchase date! If you can pay that item off in full during that free period of time they give you, then fine — you will not face a nasty, expensive interest charge. But not paying it off in full, or certainly not making any payments at all during that time, can make your purchase significantly more expensive in the end. So if you take advantage of this offer, make sure that you have a solid game plan in place to pay that charge back in full during the free time period the business gives you.