EuroTr@sh Posted May 19, 2020 Share Posted May 19, 2020 nomoss wrote : "I have a friend who bought his first house here with cash drawn on a UK credit card."I was going to say, imagine having a credit card limit high enough to buy a house.But then I remembered that at a certain point when I lived in the UK and was finding it hard to make ends meet, I did the thing of taking out end to end credit cards to take advantage of the initial interest free period. If you kept shifting the debt from one card to the next you could get away with making the minimum payment each month and pay no interest on the outstanding balance. I did that for years. I never cancelled the cards after I'd "cleared" them, and I remember once totting them all up to see how much credit I had access to in theory. This was back in the 1980s, IIRC I was earning about £18k pa, and on paper I had a combined credit limit of around 60k split over maybe 10 different cards. Crazy.I can't remember whether or not I had to tell a few porkies to keep getting issued with new cards, but if I did, there were obviously no checks carried out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoddy Posted May 19, 2020 Share Posted May 19, 2020 My elderly neighbour recently gave his grandson E10,000 towards buying his first house. They were both visited by the tax authorities and, yes, my neighbour had the money 'under his mattress'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mint Posted May 19, 2020 Share Posted May 19, 2020 ET, I'd done what you did but never, alas, on your huge scale. I used to put the cash transfers into instant access savings accounts.OH and I still have, and use, the 2 beautiful stainless steel Seiko watches I got from taking out a new card. They were near top of the range and were admired when we took them into a jeweller's recently to have the bracelets shortened and new batteries put in.BTW both OH and I have lost weight in old age and my wrist is now the size of that of a scrawny child's......oh dear! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EuroTr@sh Posted May 19, 2020 Share Posted May 19, 2020 idun wrote: "ET, I'd done what you did but never, alas, on your huge scale. "Dunno about "alas". I only did it out of desperation... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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