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Posted
Jun 26 2008, 05:42 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
This post comes from Linsey Knerl at partner blog Wise Bread. Debt is the hottest topic on personal-finance blogs around the world. Why? I would venture to guess it's because so many people are drowning in it. The unfortunate truth is that few people care to read about debt until it has already had a negative effect on their financial situation. This can make the final solution to their debt problems even more difficult to hear about.
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Posted
Jun 25 2008, 12:35 PM
by
Karen Datko
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You're brown-bagging your lunch, driving less and clipping more coupons, but you're still not cutting expenses enough to compensate for higher gas and food prices. That's a common lament of many of our readers, who often ask, "Isn't there more I can do?" Hopefully you can find some inspiration in "101 ways I saved money this year" by "The Village Idiot" at an entertaining blog called Save, You Fool!
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Posted
Apr 29 2008, 05:33 AM
by
Karen Datko
This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Back in the days of personal checks and monthly bills, "doing the bills" was an arduous task that took hours and hours. Back in the days of check registers and balancing a checkbook, doing the bills was like accounting lite. With the advent of online checking and electronic bill-payment systems, there isn't any logical reason why you should be spending an hour or two each month dealing with bills. By setting up your bill-payment details and conducting your transactions entirely online, you can add months to your life.
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Posted
Apr 25 2008, 03:55 PM
by
Karen Datko
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"Fox" at Squawkfox emptied her purse the other day, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Honestly, Fox, do you need to carry wadded-up paid and unpaid bills, expired coupons, chocolate and dental floss, not to mention mounds of makeup and assorted other girl things? "Are there things we should never carry in our purse or wallet?" she says. "Certainly, bringing bags of bills along with me every day is silly. But seriously, could a cluttered purse or wallet cost you if lost or stolen?" Oh yeah, and No. 1 among those things that should be left at home with the bills is your Social Security card.
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Posted
Apr 23 2008, 03:31 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Credit cards are about to get smarter. A story in BusinessWeek reports that MasterCard is about to introduce the inControl card for corporate clients, which will allow the boss to limit how, where and when employees use a company card on business trips. This has prompted one credit card expert to ask why the technology isn't being offered to regular consumers who have trouble controlling their credit card use but aren't willing to cut them into tiny pieces.
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Posted
Apr 17 2008, 02:58 PM
by
Karen Datko
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This guest post by "paidtwice" at I've Paid For This Twice Already won the personal-finance bloggers' March Madness competition hosted by Free Money Finance. I have had several questions lately about snowflaking -- what is it, why do I do it, can we see examples of it -- so I thought I would write a quick primer answering those questions and more.
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Posted
Apr 03 2008, 07:46 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Is your windshield frosted over in the morning? Whip out that credit card and scrape it off. That's right. They're also good for removing the crustaceans that grow on the inside of your saltwater aquarium. "Not sure if you're getting a good shave?" writes Gibble at Gather Little by Little. "Run the edge of a credit card over your beard. The noise will tell you how well you shaved." Gibble's not totally kidding. He doesn't like credit cards. But he still gets those fake cards that come in the mail with credit card applications and wanted to figure out uses for them rather than throwing them away. You can also apply his tricks to old cards that you've retired from service. He explains: "I've been burned, and I've seen and read about far too many people's lives turned upside-down through the use of credit cards. Recently though, I've been trying to focus on being more environmentally conscientious."
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Posted
Mar 31 2008, 05:54 PM
by
Karen Datko
Your credit card company isn't giving you airline miles, points or cash back because it loves you. No, sirree. "New rewards, incentives, tricks, deals, dog-and-pony shows, and other marketing gimmicks are continually coming out with the aim to extract you from your money in the fastest, most pain-free way possible," writes Randall at Credit Withdrawal. "Reminds me a little of Las Vegas," he adds.
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Posted
Mar 18 2008, 10:03 AM
by
Karen Datko
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This post comes from Joseph S. Enoch at partner blog ConsumerAffairs.com. Consumers complain that Chase and Citibank are routinely changing the due dates on their credit card statements from month to month, often making customers with automatic payments late -- saddling them with late fees and higher interest rates. "(Citibank) moved my due date to cause me to be late and give them the ability to charge a late fee and move my rate from 3.99% (for the life of the balance) to 24.44%," wrote Jeff of Noblesville, Ind. "I have always paid electronically on the 24th. ... It sent my monthly bill for Citibank from $211 to $495.” While exact numbers are difficult to quantify, ConsumerAffairs.com has found numerous complaints, some going back as far as 2001. Consumer advocates say the banks' tactics are greedy, unnecessary and more than coincidence.
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Posted
Mar 18 2008, 08:37 AM
by
Karen Datko
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Ready for a dose of outrage? Credit Slips and others report that several ordinary citizens scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing on credit card companies' bad practices were told they had to first sign a waiver allowing the companies to publicly disclose every bit of financial information they had on these folks wherever or whenever the companies pleased. "The Republicans and Democrats had worked out a deal 'to be fair to the credit card lenders,'" wrote Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and one of three Credit Slips bloggers who testified before a House Financial Services subcommittee last week. "These people couldn't say anything unless they were willing to let the credit card companies strip them naked in public." Four of the five citizen witnesses declined to sign and weren't allowed to testify. (To read the prepared remarks of one of those witnesses in a .pdf file, click here.)
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