• Tiffany Co.: The brand’s credit card offers a 0% intro APR for 12 months, or a 7.99% APR for 24 months.

However, jewelers’ financing options may not have the best terms or interest rates, and you generally won’t get any cash back or rewards on the engagement ring purchase.

The first, and most obvious, is to save up enough money and buy it outright. However, there are reasons you may not want to do this. For instance, you may want to keep a cash cushion in case of emergency, rather than committing to spending it all at once. After all, that’s why people finance things like new appliances or cars.

Fortunately, there’s another option, which is what I went with. Instead of taking out a traditional loan, or financing a ring through a credit card offered by the jeweler, you can open a new credit card that has a 0% introductory ount of time.

When I bought the ring, I opened a card that had a 0% introductory APR for the first 15 months. That meant that instead of paying cash all at once, I was able to charge the ring to the card, and pay it off over a bit more than a year without having to pay any interest.

The key is that you make sure you pay off the whole thing before the introductory APR ends and the normal one becomes effective. In my case, I decided to be safe and divided the total cost of the engagement ring by 14. I paid that amount each month, and that way, I was finished paying off the whole thing a month early.

A great feature is that you have extra flexibility if you go this route. If you come into some extra cash, or decide that you want to just finish the payments from savings, you can pay off the balance in full at any time.

The best credit cards with 0% APR offers

While there are a few different cards that offer introductory APRs, the one I would pick now is the Chase Freedom Unlimited®.

That’s because in addition to offering a long 15-month term on the 0% introductory purchase APR (which goes up to a normal % – % Variable APR afterward), it offers 1.5% cash back on most purchases, and a sign-up bonus of 1.5% cash back in https://georgiapaydayloans.org/cities/buchanan/ addition to regular earning on everything you buy up to $20,000 spent in the first year (worth up to $300 cash back) (the Chase Freedom Unlimited® also recently started offering bonus cash back on eligible travel and drugstore purchases).

As a nice cherry on top, I even got a sign-up bonus for opening the card, and cash back on the ring itself, which I was able to put right toward paying it off

Plus, if you have a premium card from Chase, like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, Chase Sapphire Reserve®, or Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, you can turn your Chase Freedom Unlimited® cash back into Chase Ultimate Rewards points instead, and move those points to the premium Chase card. That way, you can do things like transfer Chase points to frequent flyer partners, which is usually a much more lucrative way to use them than redeeming as cash back.

• Blue Cash Everyday® Card from American Express: 0% intro APR on purchases for 15 months (then % to % variable APR) (See Rates)
• Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards Credit Card: 0% intro APR on purchases for 15 months (then a % – % Variable)