Been thinking about paying BW off?

[tripletvan]

Okay just back from our holiday visit home to BW and I have been thinking (I know dangerous!).
Has anyone paid their membership off with a credit card that would give you points or miles and then in turn get a home equity loan to pay off the whole thing?

I was just thinking that the money we would have spent in interest we could use twords a few more points or take the loan out for a bit more and pay the lower interest rate than Disney is offering. When DM originally signed up her contract is at 8% financing which is steep in my mind. Also them we can actually get the membership in both of our names shince she made the boo boo when she first bought and only put her name on it which is a pain as we have one card between us.
\Any thoughts?

 

[DebbieB]

I put my original purchase on my AOL Visa, got free AOL for 6 months. I then paid it off right away with money from various sources, so no interest. One source I used was a 401K loan, paid the interest back to myself.

 

[crazywig]

we paid for our pts on our southwest visa to get the reward points , then paid the visa bill with another source immediately.

i would think a home equity loan interest would be considerably less than 8% worth looking into.

 

[mb168]

I used Disney financing for my original purchase but I did an add on last year before the points went up and since the second financing you do is higher I used a Delta AMEX card and got miles. I've since got a Shell/Citi Mastercard with a gas rebate and have been considering another add on.

 

[Luckytobedvc]

That's what I did. Use your Disney Visa card or Amex( milage points). Then charge to your home Equity at prime (4% interest only payments). You will probably save a couple of hundred dollars a month in your budget AND it is a tax write-off. "Don't even think about it"-Brooklyn slang
Dom

 

[rsschneck]

We had to obtain a new equity loan for our SSR add-on. We paid our $500 deposit to get the ball rolling (On Disney Visa) Disney gives you 30 days to pay the balance which went on Disney Visa as well. That gave me 2 entire billing cycles to get my financing together to pay the Disney Visa (we never carry a balance).

Anyway, if this is to pay off an existing DVC mortagage I would get all my other financing squared away and then use your credit card to pay off Disney so you can get the rewards points.

We earned $79.00 Disney rewards by doing our add-on this way.

Good luck!

 

[Cruelladeville]

I paid off my BCV with a Citi charge with 0% interrest for the life of the transfer, but all new charges are charged at 9.9% and that's paid off first. I just made sure nothing is ever charged on that charge card, so it's an interest free loan. You must send the payment in early too, or the loan reverts to 9.9%. Just a reminder, that when you change your DVC to both your names, they view it like a sale, and you have to pay closing costs of $500 or more. I wanted our contracts changed to include both DH and myself, but each one requires a ROFR and closing costs to accomplish that, so they are remaining in my name only until the costs go down, or H*** freezes over.

 

[goofy4dvc]

A few months ago we purchased a 100 point add on and charged them to the Disney Visa, then paid it off with a home equity mortgage at a rate of just over 5%. Heck of a deal. We'll pay it off much quicker than the 10% loan at Disney, plus we got 74 Disney Dollars by using the Disney Vida.

 

[jaysue]

We used our Aeroplan Visa card to pay off our 320 pts and received enough frequent flyer points for 1 1/3 free flights to Florida from Toronto

We then paid our card off with a refinanced mortgage at 5.6% - unfortunately mortgage interest is not deductible in Canada

thanks
jaysue

 

[rsschneck]

Too bad you can't write off the interest. You are still savings LOTS of money with an interest rate that is half of what Disney's is.

We got a 3.9% interest rate our home equity loan, so we saved A LOT compared to financing through Disney.

 

[tzvdmd]

DW thought of this early on. We used the GM card to pay off the points and bought a new car to drive on vacation.

 

[pumpkinboy]

Originally posted by rsschneck
We had to obtain a new equity loan for our SSR add-on. We paid our $500 deposit to get the ball rolling (On Disney Visa) Disney gives you 30 days to pay the balance which went on Disney Visa as well. That gave me 2 entire billing cycles to get my financing together to pay the Disney Visa (we never carry a balance). We earned $79.00 Disney rewards by doing our add-on this way.

Now MS doesn't advertise this but they know about it: if you pre-pay your usurious DVC loan using your Disney Visa card, you not only get the Disney Rewards points, but you are also eligible to carry that balance at 0% for 6 months!. We did this with our downpayment, and now that we have increased our 3.75% home-equity line, we will pay down the remaining balance once we pay off the current 0% balance (plus any purchases along the way). Call me a finance geek or a tightwad, but 0% on $15,000 vs 3.75% or worse, 9.75% is a pretty good money saver. This deal is a sure moneymaker from my perspective (that comes out to interest savings of nearly $750 over those six months! That in addition to the 150 rewards bux!).

Be careful tho; be sure to empty your Disney Visa before charging the pre-payment and then don't charge too much on the card during the 6 month period; the reason for this is that BankOne uses your payments to pay down 0% interest balance before covering your interest bearing balances (other charges, pre-existing balances etc). Also, it pays to confirm that you can do this beforehand both with BankOne and with Member Services; if they claim not to know about it, push back and get someone who does know about it, bcs it is available.