<p>Still working out the details but I think we can save $700/yr by paying tuition/fees/room & board with our 1.5% cash-back credit card. D’s school won’t take credit cards directly but they will let us pay through a 10-month installment plan run by Sallie Mae, which does take some credit cards (American Express, MasterCard, Discover, but not VISA). Sallie Mae charges no interest on this arrangement, though they do charge a $55 fee to set up the installment plan. I figure the gains/losses of interest on the money in our bank account are about a wash; the Sallie Mae 10-month plan has us paying for 3 months of each semester earlier than the college bill itself would be due, and spreads the final payments for each semester over 2 months after the tuition is due. But since we effectively get a 30-day “float” before the credit card payment is due, it effectively shifts to 2 months pre-paid and 3 months post-paid each semester. Of course, we save money only if we pay off the credit card in full each month, but since we’d already set aside enough cash for 2 lump-sum payments to the college, it should be no problem to parcel that money out into 10 monthly payments.</p>
<p>^ forget about the credit card deal (post #81). Turns out Sallie Mae charges a $450 per transaction “convenience fee” to pay by credit card. Unbelievable! And totally a deal-breaker. Worst part is, they don’t tell you anything about it in the FAQs about the program; that little detail appears in fine print only after you’re well into the process of setting up the installment payment plan. Fortunately, you can just exit out of the website and scrub the whole transaction any time before you hit the “submit” button at the end. But I wouldn’t have spent all that time trying to set it up if they had just been a little more transparent in the beginning.</p>
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<p>I hear ya! I’m a lawyer, so I’m always looking for the catches, fees, fine print, and they are often hard to find. With lots of “deals” that are advertised on the web, you can read the entire site and not see a negative word, then you get a 4 page mailing at your house in 6 point font, and that’s where the deal breaker is.</p>
<p>We got sucked into thinking we could use a credit card to pay for tuition at UT-Austin. I even went through the process of getting a new credit card because they won’t take American Express or Visa. bclintonk, the same thing happened to me. I was way into the process before the “convenience fee” notification was disclosed, although it was nowhere near $450 per transaction! Now I’m carrying around this DiscoverCard that I feel like I should cancel.</p>
<p>Jym626. I am a cleaning lady, but don’t clean anybody’s pipes. lol.</p>
<p>We’ve always paid tuition online with a credit card, convenient and earned us points with our card’s bonus program. Not anymore, along with the tuition bill last month was a statement saying there would be a 2.75% service charge for using a CC.<br>
I mailed the check last week.</p>