Cash Advance: How much will it cost me?
I am currently in Oxford, England for one month and am down to like 20 pounds cash. I also need Euros for my trips to France etc.
The option I see is using either my MasterCard or Visa (each have about 19% annual interest rate) to withdraw cash (roughly $200 dollars Canadian or 60 pounds or 60 Euros). My parents will deposit what I withdraw into my credit card so I am really just interested in how much interest I would accumulate at like a 1 week period.
Can I also tell my credit card company not to use the money that my parents deposit towards purchases made but instead only towards the cash advance?
Are there any other options that I have?
Actually I just read that my Visa Gold has a 19.5% cash advance rate.
But I am unsure if that is daily, weekly, annually etc.
A solid number would be very helpful
Oops sorry…18.5% Cash advance for Visa Gold and 18.99% for MasterCard.
Yes I know annually means yearly but I got confused when reading the explanation Visa gives for their calculations of Interest:
We calculate interest daily, however we only add it to your Visa Account monthly. The amount of interest we charge is calculated as follows:
* we multiply the amount you owe each day by the applicable daily interest rate or rates (that is the applicable annual interest rate or rates divided by the number of days in the year) and
* for each month, we add together the interest charges for each day.
The total is the interest we charge you.
http://www.rbcroyalbank.com/cards/documentation/ch_agreements/ch_agreement.html
annualy means yearly
No you can't tell the credit card company to use the money your parents deposit towards the cash advance only. The credit card companies will charge you that cash advance interest as long as they possibly can, so until you pay off all charges up to and including the cash advance fee, you're still going to be charged that horrible cash advance interest rate. It might be cheaper to just have your parents wire you the money directly.
No, you cannot tell your CC company to use the money for cash advance and not purchases. They have no way to do this. You're better off doing one of the following: 1. Make the withdrawel THEN have your parents pay the amount withdrawn shortly after the withdrawel. Basically they are making your credit card payment for you. You should not incure a finance charge if you pay it before your monthly statement period ends. If your parents pay the money before you withdraw it you will have to wait several days for the payment to process. 2. Have the money wired to you. This could be done at a Bank or Western Union if they have them where you are. You can usually get wired funds instantly.