Stupid College Finance Tricks

Back in college my cards were all maxed out except this Sears card. The only reason I even had that card was because they were giving away free Reeces Pieces if you signed up one day when I was in the mall spending other money I didn't have at various stores. Yes you heard me, I did it for a free pack of 16 peanut butter cups.

So there it was, a whole virgin 800$ credit limit, taunting me. Sure it was money, but there was nothing I wanted at Sears. Sears didn't sell booze, food or accept payments for the electric company. They sold electronics but I didn't want any electronics.... Or did I?

Someone certainly wanted electronics and surely there was a way to leverage that demand. So I bought the biggest TV I could find and took it to a pawn shop. Sure enough, they handed me a hundred bucks. A few weeks later I paid the loan off, got the TV out of pawn and returned it to Sears. I did this trick another time with a camcorder, since luggling the TV around almost broke my back.

I got two hundred bucks for the $700 camcorder. I paid that off and returned it.

I learned too late that I was misjudging my target market. They offered me 40$ for a Sears space heater, almost 80% of the price. They were really excited when I brought that heater too. As gratitude for their financial services I let them keep it. If I went back, I thought I might be better off with offerings of tools and car gadgets than the high end electtronics.

Please do not actually attempt to do this. In retrospect it would have been a million times easier if I'd just saved money and acted responsibly than sitting around cooking up crazy stuff like this.