Good advice there, i was incredulous to overhear a salesperson in Dixons last year pushing an extended warranty on someone buying an expensive pda.
The arguement basically went along the lines of, if you like, lost it, ya know, or mabye dropped it, next year say, then we'd have to replace it with a new one for you, wink, wink.
I was gobsmacked enough to ask to speak to a manager who wasn't best pleased at the approach taken by this person!
Credit card cheques.....When Eircom went public I used an MBA credit card cheque to buy some shares. I sold the shares ~1 week later, made a nice profit and paid back MBA. Never give up a line of credit!
A little....but the profit made far outweighed the cost! (PS I'm not disagreeing that credit card cheques are a bad thing...just that they could have their benefits in certain cases)
I actually got a loan from the bank I then worked in to buy Eircom shares - we were offered a loan of up to 100% of our salary - madness! Some people did borrow the max. and were still repaying it years later. I sold my shares within about a week (can't recall exactly how long), paid back the loan, few quid interest & happy days! But I was lucky becuase alot of people held onto the shares after they started to go south & ended up having to hold to them as they wouldn't make enough money to pay back the loan.
Maybe that old advice is true - not to invest money on the stockmarket you can't afford to lose?