<prompt> Human: Scenario: You have the cash on hand to pay cash for a 30,000 car. 0 financing deal is available. What do you choose to do? How would you invest during the 0 financing period? What are the pros and cons of each option? Ignore the fact that not buying a well-treated, lightly-used car is throwing away money. Youre set on buying new. Discuss.  <response>: The things to be careful with... Make sure its really a 0 loan, and your payments total up to the amount being financed at 0. There are stories here every few weeks of someone thinking they were getting 0, but it was some scam where it was 0 interest but there were fees that made it more like 10-20 interest. Always avoid that kind of bullshit. 0 financing offers often seem to be contingent on buying the vehicle for MSRP and forgoing any rebates or other offers. Not always, but if the dealer is making you pay MSRP to get 0... it might be a vehicle that never sells for MSRP and youd be much better off buying it for the market price, thousands under MSRP, and financing at a market rate too. And youd definitely be better off paying cash for a much cheaper sale price. On a purely logical level, yes it does make sense to buy a car with 0 financing then investing the money at a safe interest rate. You effectively reduce the price of the car by whatever return minus taxes you got on the investment MMA, CDs, etc. But in the real world, people have a lot of trouble with this... we often see people who intended to pay in full before the 0 offer period expired, but the money just isnt there any more because shit happened, or they forgot, or they were irresponsible. Or their parents, kids or spouse were. Paying cash saves you from yourself, basically. 