Those Deals Aren’t Real

by Joanne Bradford

‘Fifty percent off’. ‘Buy one get one free’. ‘Twenty four hour sales’. Yes, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all about the deals, as well as the associated frenzy that comes with them every year.

But while we’re rushing stores and frantically going online to fill our carts, we often don’t think about the hidden prices that can come with those discounted items. If we took a moment to consider that swiping a credit card on all those bargain purchases comes with the added cost of APR fees, we’d probably be less excited to camp outside a store for the evening, or actually fight over a TV. Point blank: With credit card interest bills over time, Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale items actually cost more than those crazy deals suggest.

That’s why, when you open your newspaper Wednesday and Sunday, beside the typical stack of circulars screaming about sales and percents off, you’ll also catch one from the SoFi team that shines a light on the added cost of the things we all purchase with credit cards.

Through this circular, we’ll highlight (in an absurd way) how these deals go from door busters to wallet busters once you pay for them over time on high interest credit cards. And what better time to send this out than during the biggest shopping days of the year: Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Here’s why we’re putting a spotlight on this now: Because you don’t have to be stuck with high credit card interest building up over time. With a SoFi personal loan, you can not only wrangle all of those higher rate APRs into one  possibly lower rate, but pay credit cards off much sooner.  

So when you swipe that card this year (and we all will), this circular will remind you of what you could really be spending. And once those APR charges hit, SoFi will be here to help out.