|
|
|
Best Credit Cards
Choosing the best credit cards to meet your personal credit needs is an important step to take. Credit cards are the best for short-term credit borrowing, and if you choose the best credit cards wisely, you won't be struggling with unmanageable...
Fix Credit Report Errors - 3 Easy Steps
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), both the company that reported your credit information and the three National Consumer Reporting Agencies (Equifax, TransUnion and Experian) must correct errors or any missing information in your credit...
Get Your Credit Score To Soar In The Twinkling of An Eye.
Ever wonder how a creditor decides whether to grant you credit? For years, creditors have been using credit scoring systems to determine if you'd be a good risk for credit cards and auto loans. More recently, credit scoring has been used to help...
How Do You Know If Your Credit Card Agent Is the Best?
Since you are the customer, there must be a glut of credit card
agents constantly hounding you day-in, day-out. They may try to
cram all their pitches in hour long phone call marathons or
minute long infomercials and may run the gamut of...
Research can help you avoid Bad Credit
Staying in contact with your creditors every month can help you
avoid bad credit. If you research the marketplace before coming
to a buying decision, you are well on your way to avoiding bad
credit and repairing credit hassles. You want to...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Choosing and Using Credit Cards
Credit cards are convenient, but they're also dangerous. A lot
of people ruin their financial lives by turning the phrase
"charge it" into a reflex. It's a real problem, but this article
explains how to make good use of credit cards and how to choose
a good credit card. This information, by the way, applies both
to using a credit card for personal expenses and to using a
credit card for business expenses.
Selecting the Right Credit Card
Selecting a credit card is easy. If you don't carry charges
forward from month to month, choose the card with the lowest
annual fee. It doesn't matter to you if the credit card company
charges a painfully high interest rate, since you pay only the
annual fee if you pay your monthly credit card bill on time.
If you do carry a balance, it makes sense to choose the card
with the lowest interest rate. Some credit card issuers play
interest rate calculation tricks that make it very difficult to
make apples-to-apples comparisons of credit cards. But if you
choose the credit card rate with the lowest annual percentage
rate, you're doing about as well as you can.
The Right Way to Use a Credit Card
You shouldn't use a credit card as a way to borrow money. That
means always repaying the charges within the grace period. You
want to be what the bank calls "a revolver," which is a person
who always pays his or her credit card bills on time.
After investments in a profitable business, a 401(k), and a
deductible IRA, the next best investment you can make is to pay
off credit cards that charge a high interest rate. Earning a
tax-free interest rate of, say, 14 percent, which more than what
a 401(k) and deductible IRA pay (and probably only slightly less
than investments in your business should pay) is too good to
pass up.
NOTE While credit card interest on personal charges would not be
deductible for income tax purposes, credit card interest on
business charges should be deductible as business interest
expense. Therefore, the worst kind of credit card debt is
personal credit card debt. Business debt isn't quite as bad.
Do Affinity Cards Make Sense?
An affinity card is a credit card that's issued by someone other
than a bank--such as a car manufacturer, an airline, a
professional group, and so forth. Affinity cards typically
combine the usual features of a credit card with some extra
benefit connected to the issuer. In the case of a General Motors
card, for example, you accumulate dollars in a rebate account by
virtue of what you spend with the affinity card.
In
general, an affinity card--especially one that doesn't charge
a fee--is a good deal as long as the interest rate is
competitive. For example, I have a General Motors credit card
that includes a 5 percent rebate account. In other words, five
cents of every dollar I charge on the card goes into a rebate
account that I can use toward purchasing a new General Motors
car. How big your rebate gets depends on the type of affinity
card you have. For example, as of this writing the regular
General Motors credit card lets you accumulate up to $500 a year
to a maximum of $3,500. The General Motors gold credit card lets
you accumulate up to $1,000 a year to a maximum of $7,000.
There are many different affinity cards. Ford has one. Most of
the major airlines have them too. Airline affinity cards let you
accumulate frequent flier miles based on the credit card
charges. In the plans I've seen, you usually get a mile a dollar.
The one sticky part of using affinity cards, however, is that
getting even a 5 percent rebate isn't worth it if having the
card makes you spend more money. Some studies show that you
spend 23 percent more when you use a credit card. The same is
very likely true of affinity cards.
If you're one of those people who spends more when you have a
card in hand, you won't save any money by using an affinity
card. Even if you get a new General Motors car for free or a
handful of free airline tickets to Europe, you pay indirectly
for your new car or airline tickets with all the extra charging
you do. If you don't make use of the rebate, the situation is
even worse. You've charged more, perhaps paid hefty annual fees,
and you've received nothing in return.
NOTE One other point to consider argues in favor of using
affinity cards for business charges. In many businesses, you
will have large business credit card charges--much larger than
an individual making personal charges will have. In this case,
assuming you don't overcharge and don't overspend, you may find
that an affinity charge card produces big benefits. In my case,
because many of my business expenses can be charged on my
frequent flier credit card, I probably get two free airline
tickets a year.
About the author:
Seattle certified public
accountant & Stephen L. Nelson CPA has written more than 150
books. His bestselling book is Qu Determining How Much Life
Insurance You Needicken for Dummies, which sold more than
1,000,000 copies. His books have sold more than 4,000,000 copies
in English and have been translated into more than a dozen other
languages.
|
|
|
|
|
| Credit Reports - Credit Cards - Car Loans - Home Loans - Credit.com |
| Credit.com offers a variety of credit related products and services including credit reports and credit scores, credit cards, car loans, home loan and ... |
| www.credit.com |
|
| Equifax Personal Solutions: Credit Reports, Credit Scores ... |
| National consumer credit reporting company that offers credit reports, FICO(R) credit scores and identity theft protection products to consumers and small ... |
| www.equifax.com |
|
| The FTC's web site on Credit |
| Credit is much more than a piece of plastic, and the resources on this site can help you become a more savvy consumer. You’ll also find compliance ... |
| www.ftc.gov |
|
| Federal Trade Commission - Consumer Credit Center |
| Features an assortment of helpful articles related to credit issues. |
| www.ftc.gov |
|
| AnnualCreditReport |
| Site set up by the big three credit reporting agencies in the United States, to furnish free annual credit reports, as required by federal law. |
| www.annualcreditreport.com |
|
| Springboard - Non-Profit Consumer Credit Management |
| Our mission is simple: To offer education on the wise use of credit. ... SPRINGBOARD has been approved to provide credit counseling services and issue ... |
| www.credit.org |
|
| myFICO - FICO Credit Scores, Online Credit Reports and Identity ... |
| myFICO.com: Get your Free credit report and Free credit score with a 30-day trial of Score Watch. All three FICO Scores and Credit Reports Available now ... |
| www.myfico.com |
|
| Credit Suisse Global |
| Credit Suisse Group is an international financial services group. - Shares part of SMI. |
| www.credit-suisse.com |
|
| Experian: Free Credit Report and Credit Score, Credit Check ... |
| Credit referencing and consumer targeting for the USA and other countries. |
| www.experian.com |
|
| National Credit Union Administration - Home Page |
| An independent federal agency that supervises and insures 7152 federal credit unions and insures 4240 state-chartered credit unions. |
| www.ncua.gov |
|
| Credit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Debits and Credits, a type of bookkeeping entry; Credit (creative arts), acknowledging the ideas or ... Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit" ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| Credit (finance) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Any movement of financial capital is normally quite dependent on credit, ... Sometimes if a person has financial instability or difficulty, credit is not ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| The National Foundation for Credit Counseling |
| DebtAdvice.org is a service provided by the Members of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), most of them known as Consumer Credit ... |
| www.nfcc.org |
|
| FreeCreditReport.com | Free Credit Report and Credit Score Online ... |
| FreeCreditReport.com: Free credit reports and credit scores from Experian. Get your free credit report and credit score now. It's free, fast, and easy! |
| www.freecreditreport.com |
|
| Compare credit cards | apply for a credit card | 0% balance ... |
| Compare over 300 credit cards, including 0% offers and balance transfers, and make a credit card application online... |
| www.moneysupermarket.com |
|
| Ford Credit - Auto financing for Ford, Lincoln and Mercury cars ... |
| Ford Credit provides auto financing to finance a lease or purchase a car or truck through Ford, Lincoln or Mercury dealerships. |
| www.fordcredit.com |
|
| The Credit Card Prank |
| In my lifetime, I have made nearly 15000 credit card transactions. ... Credit card signatures are a useless mechanism designed to make you feel safe, ... |
| www.zug.com |
|
| Credit magazine, corporate bonds, derivatives, structured credit ... |
| Credit magazine provides information on the international credit markets for credit investors, issuers and market professionals. |
| www.creditmag.com |
|
| CUNA: The Credit Union National Association |
| News and resource directory about credit unions. |
| www.cuna.org |
|
| Credit/Debt Management - Tools and Advice for Managing Credit and Debt |
| Drowning in debt? Trying to improve your credit score? This is the place for you. Get real world information and tips, as well as the legal low down, ... |
| credit.about.com |
|
|