If you have a credit card, youve most likely gotten them more than once. That handful of blank convenience checks included in your monthly statement or sent out as a very special offer just for you. The offer sounds greatjust fill out a few of these checks and take that vacation youve been wanting, pay off some other bills, and get yourself a little something when youre all done! It may be too tempting to pass upafter all, theyre basically offering you free money, right? But as always, anything that sounds too good to be true usually is. Heres why you should get rid of those checks as soon as possible and tell the company to never, ever, send you any more.
Here’s a recent question we got from a reader.
I really have been working hard at not filing bankrupcy but I may not have a choice anymore. My question is, ‘are credit cards with a zero balance included in the bankrupcy’? Will the courts let you keep those?
Would you like to save 10% on your purchases today? This is something Im sure youve heard, probably repeatedly, on any trip to the mall. If youre always on the lookout for ways to save money, hopefully to pay down your debt, this probably seems like a no-brainer. Who doesnt love a bargain? But hold on for a second. You no doubt know that this is the opening to a sales pitch for a store credit card and believe it or not, the cashier may not actually have your best interests at heart. There are a number of ways that todays good deal can come back to hurt you down the road.
Amex Raises APRs Ahead of Credit Card Bill of Rights
I received several letters in the mail last week from Amex indicating that they will be raising my APR on each of my cards. I don’t care at all, since I never pay interest on my credit cards. The folks at the Consumerist had a different take on the situation; “AMEX Blue Raises Rates, Also On Past Balances, And Won’t Let You Leave”.
In part two of our series, well be showing you how to pull your credit report from Experian without accidentally signing up for any subscriptions (check out Part one – Transunion). That is, well be getting your credit report absolutely free, in spite of nearly every other force colluding to induce you to buy something. In part one of our series, we walked through the process of starting an AnnualCreditReport.com session. Well pick up where we left off there.
I was reading the One Mile At A Time blog, and after having won their photo contest, came across this post entitled “Is it time to rethink the cash back credit card?”. The title perplexed me, as I love cash back cards. As I read the post, I got to contemplating the nature of cash back versus reward points.
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Chris Elliot has a post on his travel blog about someone being hit with a “foreign transaction fee” when they booked through Expedia’s US cite. To Chris’s surprise, the card holder had the fee removed by calling up the credit card company to complain.
A few weeks ago, the folks from walletpop.com interviewed me on their blog talk radio show. You can listen to the interview here.
I was talking to my grandparents the other day and I posed this question to them. I’ll get to the story that lead to the question in just a minute, but I wanted to find out what their take was.