There was another post earlier about the maybank new ezycash  offer for cash out with 6 months instalment at 0% interest rate, and I notice some people dismiss it or think it's too little benefit to care.

For people that think it's dumb to take advantage of these kind of offer for just few hundreds bucks, that is because you don't have a full strategy to utilize these offers.

But before I continue I must note this isn't meant for people that lack self discipline and self control, all financials tools are neither good or bad, it's entirely up for the users.

My Strategy

Bank offers 0% interest of ezycash/instalment/balance transfer from time to time, here's how I personally use them:

  1. On my CCRIS I have a ~78% utilization on all my credit limits from a few banks, the outstanding total is RM102,335
  2. Most of these outstanding are either 0% interest instalment from balance transfer promo, or convert your spend to instalment promo.
  3. Now HERE is the where the real strategy comes in, I rollover those outstanding whenever I clear up some limits, in plain words which means every month let say i pay RM 8k, this RM8k is then return to available credit limit, I then look for another promo like this, and extract that money out again with 0% interest, this means I'm constantly rolling the RM100k debt, which you can see it as bank lend me RM100k indefinitely, and I have been doing this for years.
  4. Now how you utilize this RM100k is completely up to you, if you are risk averse, put them in ASB or US short term treasury for that sweet 5% with low risk, which is RM5k free every year, but personally I see those outstanding as an advanced salary paid to me, which i can just return the payment with next month salary, so I am basically just invest earlier with my salary, and I invested most of them in US index funds like CSPX, if you look at the return of S&P500 and the weakening MYR against USD, you can prolly tell I made roughly about RM 100k with these offers.
Note
  • The key here is to rollover your debt, the goal is to roll until the time you die and owes your bank RM100k and you win LOL, (or until that RM100k capital is nothing to you.)
  • Pay your monthly statement on time, my CCRIS are all 0, of course the high utilization does impact your ability to apply for new credit cards and new loan, so make sure you plan around that, or decrease utilization by stopping the rollover if you plan to buy house or something in next year, because most of these debt are instalment of 12 months, some 18 months, you can easily clear off majority of the debt and reduce utilization back to normal level in just a year or max 2 years.
  • THIS IS NOT SUITABLE FOR PEOPLE THAT LACK DISCIPLINE AND SELF CONTROL OBVIOUSLY.

By the way, taking advantage with these offer are way easier when most e-wallet doesn't charge you 1% for credit card top up, so now it may be harder with the increase cost, but there are other ways to achieve the same without e-wallet, just use credit card for regular day life spending works too.

I wrote more about this in my blog post:

Balance Transfer: The Interest Free Capital You Should Know - MalaysianPF.com