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The New Camera06 04 06-------- The New Debt – The Only Debt
Picture quality is superb. I feel happy I took it on my trip. If you want to see the photos, just send me an e-mail and I will send you the link to the photo site. The camera is fast using flash or not, it helps me with exposure bracketing, and gives me the manual controls for special effects. 6 Mega pixels is not an amazing amount, but when used with the Nikkor lenses I had from the other camera (the made in Japan ones), the picture quality is unsurpassed. The problem with interest free cards/plans The only problem I had was that it set me back around $850 (price tag of $799, plus tax and some accessories). All of it went into a 12 month interest free plan on my Best Buy. All good, and the first payment even came after my trip.Interest free payment plans forego the interest payments if you pay within a specified period of time, in this case 12 months. The specific plan I got only requires you to pay $40 each month, and if you do the math it takes more than 12 months to pay at that rate. That is exactly what the creditor wants: They want you to get comfortable with a low payment and be unable to pay in full when the 12th month comes – charging you a full 18.99% percent, or more than $150 extra on the first year! My advice with Interest Free Plans: Have the money to pay in full at any time! I did saved the money to pay in full at any time. But I did trick myself in a way I don’t advice you to do so: I sent it directly to my Ameritrade brokerage account. Getting it back would mean either selling some stock or putting it into margin. It left me with only one option: Come up with $100 each month until I paid in full, before the 12 month period. There is no way I am going to pay the interest or have to get the money out of my brokerage account! I do have the ability to pay a hundred dollars every month to the creditor. It is easy: it falls right within my $900 a month miscellaneous and extraordinary expenses budget. The problem it creates is that now I can not spend more than $800 in miscellaneous expenses. I have $100 less of things I can buy or pay every month. I can certainly see how someone can fall into distress or even debt with interest free payment plans: if they get too many, they end up asphyxiating their financial situation. Since a camera is a hobby, I have decided that any website add revenue that exceed the hosting fees will go towards paying my hobby debt. I like the idea so much I am even thinking about extending it towards paying other debt (mortgage), and convert the website into a debt paying mechanism. The sooner I can pay the camera debt, the sooner I can get $100 back into my life. A breather!Other posts on the new camera dilemma: Posts about the trip to Argentina, Chile and Patagonia:
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