%title Umf, money.
%date 2008-01-03 09:38:39
:diary:livejournal:fossils:

As always, there's more to the story than just interest rates that should play into my decision on the card and a possible loan.  When I checked to see what a loan would be like in the way of monthly payments at similar or lower interest rates, I forgot to take finance charges into account.  My plan before now is to just dump everything I can onto the card so that I don't have to worry about budgeting for food, knowing that that's difficult to do.  The problem with this, of course is that finance charges are calculated mostly based on purchases on the card.  This is shown by the fact that a three year loan at 5% less interest than I'm paying on the card is slightly more than my monthly minimum payment, which I thought was  strange considering how long it was taking me to pay off the card, until I realized about half of each payment was going towards finance charges.

So I guess my options are to keep paying off the card at my current rate (not very fast) or take out a loan (not very fast, but certainly more efficient).  James would have me take out a student loan, which would have a better interest rate but would make me uncomfortable, never mind my past opinions of his financial advice.  I would go with <a href="http://prosper.com">Prosper</a>, which would give me a higher interest rate (still lower than the card), but would fit in more with my ideals and make me feel better for borrowing for the right thing.  Nothing's urgent, though, so I have time to research.