**Just to put this front and center: I have no debt, and no problems paying off my monthly credit card bill, and would never look into these strategies if I did**
With that out of the way, as a good Mustachian with a good credit score, I've done my share of credit card hacking; i.e. signing up for cards with good intro bonuses, manufacturing spending to get to spend thresholds etc.. In the past, I've also taken advantage of cards with 0% APR periods to help me finish off paying student loans.
However, lately, i've been getting a lot of offers from my various credit card issuers, offering me 0% APR on not just balance transfers, but straight up cash. They've been sending me checks in the mail, and i can basically use them for anything I want, or write a check to anyone I want (even myself) and as long as I pay off the amount within the 12-15 months (and not use the card for anything else), i won't be charged any interest. They do seem to charge a one time transaction fee- the offers I've gotten from seem to range from 2%-3%. I heard this type of thing was abundant before the 07/08 crash, but I had just gotten out of school then and didn't really have much credit history to speak of.
I've been basically ignoring these, but I'm wondering if there aren't some interesting uses here that I'm not considering? My first thought was- would it be worth 2% i'd pay on this money to take out, say a $10,000 advance and just max out our IRAs now? Or put it into our taxable account? (all index funds) Or maybe the 2% fee makes this not a great deal.
Or maybe there are other creative ways to use an offer like this?
Or maybe, I should just stop trying to fuck around with things like this and just keep putting them through the shredder?
Thoughts?