A post about a free laptop deal from Visa on a ‘Debt Consolidation’ blog is getting a bit of traffic this morning, from both BoingBoing and Digg. The blog author dissects the cost of maintaining the balances required to receive the $850 laptop and comes up with a fee of—over the course of 17 months—$911.95. Sound heinous, right? It is—if you don’t have enough previous credit card debt to transfer to the new card.

But as a commentor notes:

In other words today you get an $850 laptop and $2500 in cash from the loan (cash advance) plus $1000 in a loan from the balance transfer. In 17 months you pay back the $2500 in principal plus that month
s finance charge (totaling $845 over the last 17 months). In essence it means that if you buy a laptop for $850, then you can borrow $3500 for 17 months for free.

And since any cool kids have at least $5,000 in credit card debt, this may not actually be too bad of a deal, should you have the discipline to invest $3,500 in something worthwhile, such as a spiking the lemonade in your child’s stand with cocaine. Too bad nobody actually linked the offer from any of these posts.

Free Laptop from Visa [Debt-Consolidation.Strategy-Blogs]

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