Queercents

Credit cards seems so straightforward on the surface, but a dizzying array of fine print details can make using yours more like running through a land mine laden field of financial woes. As someone who pays the balance in full each month, avoids late fees, and never uses it for cash advances, I tend to avoid reading all the fine print on my bill. Yet, as Time Magazine points out in the March 3, 2008 issue article called “The Fine Print”:

To credit-card companies, it’s not sufficient that customers pay their bills on time every month; they must also avoid a daunting array of borrowing habits that lenders deem risky. Like borrowing. Katie Groves, 42, learned this firsthand when the annual interest rate on her Chase Visa bill jumped to 29.99% from the previous 12%. Although she had never missed a payment and owed only $500, she was told that her rate had increased because Chase had checked her credit report.

Most consumers are unaware that the banks constantly monitor all their borrowing behavior. Even if you just get too close to your borrowing limit (a figure you probably don’t know) on your cards and mortgages, as Groves did, you can trigger what the industry calls universal default.

Universal default is just one of the many hidden gotchas that credit card users often miss. Issuers can pretty much add fees and hike rates at will. Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently signing up for a new program with one of my long term service providers. This person changed their offerings, pricing, and packaging so I had to do some reviewing and deciding. I knew for certain I wanted her service and I knew what package was right for me. I just needed to figure out how to pay for it. That brought me to the question: Do I take her extended payment arrangement or should I self-finance by putting it on my credit card?

It seems like an easy question, but it is not always easy to answer. Why? So often we don’t take the time to actually do the math and realistically determine what the best option is. And, we sometimes don’t have the discipline to follow through on consistently paying down the balance left to our own devices whereas on a monthly plan we are forced to pay what is due.

Here’s how you can make this determination fairly quickly for any big purchase you have looming. At least it worked for me. Read the rest of this entry »

“Remain calm. All is well!” – Kevin Bacon in National Lampoon’s Animal House

Jeanine and I went to Atlanta for the weekend and here’s my bean counting story: We bought two tall coffees and a bagel at the airport Starbucks before flying out of John Wayne. I handed the associate my Starbucks card and she realized it didn’t have enough money on it so I handed her my credit card and told her to reload it with twenty bucks. For some reason this transaction flustered her and as the line started form, I was getting agitated along with the 10 people behind me wanting overpriced lattes. She finally figured it out and voila, we were on our way to Hotlanta.

Fast forward to Sunday morning as we’re taking a stroll with my friend through historic Ansley Park… admiring the homes and chatting up prices of this one and that one. At the end of the outing, we hit a mid-town Starbucks and as I try to pay, the associate politely says, “Oh I’m sorry, your card is empty.” Inside my head, I wanted to scream but instead I hand him my MasterCard and explain nicely that I thought I did this yesterday. He refills my Starbucks card with another twenty bucks. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you ever see the Shawshank Redemption? Do you remember how you felt when you realized that the hero had tunneled his way out of prison with his rock hammer and only a poster to cover up his work?

Wow. What kind of tenacity did that take? Of course, he didn’t have much else to do, really.

We’ve all tuned into the motivational purrings of Dave Ramsey. Get rid of debt. Use the “roll down” technique. It’s simple. A moron could do it.

Except, it isn’t magic. For many people, the roll down technique doesn’t work. Many of us need more empirical evidence that what we are doing, the energy we are expending, the discipline that we are sustaining is really working. After all, we’ve all been fooled before. Read the rest of this entry »

If you work in the financial services industry or know someone who does, you have likely been hearing about Money Merge Accounts.

The premise behind these accounts is that you can eliminate debt to ½ or as little as 1/3 of the timeline. The fee being charged is only for software. The software will show you how to eliminate all of your debt, including your mortgage. Estimates are given of roughly nine years.

Is a Money Merge Account the right system to employ to eliminate debt?

It depends upon how you look at things. Some people use a real estate broker to purchase a home while others believe they get a bargain by purchasing a FSBO (For Sale By Owner) home. By purchasing FSBO, no real estate broker commission is paid and some people believe they must be saving money. After all, a real estate commission adds around 6% to the price. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re like millions of consumers who overstretched during the holiday purchase frenzy, you are starting to feel the pangs of buyer’s remorse as the credit card bills start to roll in. It’s that time of year where you either feel letdown or relief that the holiday hub-bub has passed and are faced with the cold hard financial facts of all that revelry.

Even if you were already planning a New Year’s Resolution for 2008 that sounded something like “get my financial house in order”, if you put your holiday giving and bliss on plastic, you have a mountain to climb first.

According to the Boston Herald:

Consumers have a lot of card debt to deal with. Even before the 2007 holiday spending season began, Americans added more than $50 billion to their credit cards in the first 10 months of the year to reach a record total of $928.5 billion in October, according to the Federal Reserve. The additional spending in November and December undoubtedly pushed balances even higher.

That’s a lot of debt hangover. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I analyzed my 2008 financial plans in spending and saving. This week I want to look at the rest of the categories: debt, credit and career.

Debt

As I’ve discussed before, my only debt is my massive student loans. One of the most interesting things about the comments to my original post was the suggestions for really intense and creative ways to deal with this debt… and though it was good advice it was also a little overwhelming, and requires more discipline than I have or want to develop. Read the rest of this entry »

“Cleaning up after identity theft is a marathon, not a sprint. Prepare your mind accordingly.” – Frank Mellott

In the United States, tomorrow is known as Black Friday, typically one of the biggest shopping days of the year as it launches the traditional holiday buying season. Some of you might also recognize it as Buy Nothing Day. Of course, the best way to prevent identity theft is to stay home and buy nothing, but many will still be waking up early or perhaps not going to bed this evening.

If you are hitting the malls, then here are some things you can do to prevent a stolen identity. First, let’s take an inventory of what’s in your wallet: Read the rest of this entry »