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Posted
Oct 01 2008, 08:04 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
I got a massive headache at a screening of "I.O.U.S.A." on Monday night. As I left the theater I noticed that a lot of moviegoers looked a bit queasy. "They didn't tell me it was going to be a horror film," I joked to one woman. She nodded, and shuddered. Actually shuddered.
Not enough people are going to see this movie, I think, because it deals with a subject we're all really tired of hearing about: America's fiscal improvidence.
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Posted
Oct 01 2008, 06:26 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Abigail Perry at I Pick Up Pennies. Unless you're living in a soundproofed house with no connection to any media, you've heard about the turmoil on Wall Street. Experts say this is only the beginning. Or the middle, if you see this as an extension of the subprime crisis. Here's what I see as an underlying theme for recent personal and national financial crises: We've stopped seeing money as real.
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Posted
Sep 21 2008, 05:19 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. The October issue of Consumer Reports has an article about the new credit card jungle. The faltering economy and the ongoing mortgage crisis may be affecting your credit cards; issuers are raising rates, changing terms and lowering credit limits. The magazine says, "Now is an essential time to do a credit card checkup to make sure your accounts haven't changed for the worse." I like the idea of a credit card checkup, but I don't think it's something you should do just once in a while. To avoid the dangers lurking in this credit card jungle, it's important to foster a set of survival skills that will help you avoid traps before you blindly stumble upon them. Here are a five ways to deal with problems before they happen:
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Posted
Sep 08 2008, 03:14 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
No matter how much personal-finance bloggers write about credit cards, myths about them persist. Kristin at Twenties Money Magazine sets the record straight with "TMM top 20 dumb credit card rumors." Here's No. 18, which we think gets a lot of traction, even though it's absolutely untrue: "Cash advance is the same as using an ATM." In fact, credit card cash advances come with a hefty price tag.
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Posted
Aug 11 2008, 01:27 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Guess what country this paragraph from a New York Times story describes: Outstanding card debt here ballooned to nearly $18 billion last year, six times the level five years earlier. Default rates spiked and consumer groups protested sky-high interest charges. It's Turkey, where less than a generation ago consumer debt was almost unheard of and came with a heavy burden of shame.
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Posted
Jul 31 2008, 09:59 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
If you're paying big bucks to credit-repair companies to piggyback on other people's good credit and artificially increase your score, the credit-score police will no longer be fooled.
So says Fair Isaac Corp., the company that devised the widely used FICO credit score. Fair Isaac has figured out a way to detect when people are abusing the privilege of authorized-user status on other people's credit cards. "Fortunately, we were able to come up with technology that makes it much harder to game the system," Fair Isaac chief operations officer Mike Campbell told CreditCards.com.
This is good news for consumers.
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Posted
Jul 31 2008, 06:19 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Philip Brewer at partner blog Wise Bread. There are certain ways to get free money or free stuff simply by paying attention, keeping track, and being careful. I don't do these things. It's not because they don't work; it's not even because the risk-adjusted earnings don't pay for the time spent. It's because time -- and especially time spent paying attention -- is very precious. The clearest example of the sort of thing I'm talking about is getting a cash advance from a new credit card with a 0% teaser rate. Slap that money in your high-interest savings account, pay off the loan when it's due, and you can pocket the interest. Borrow $100,000, and you could pick up close to $2,000 of free money in six months.
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Posted
Jul 30 2008, 05:26 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog The Dough Roller. Credit card companies are masters of marketing. From cash back to travel rewards, and 0% introductory rates to gas rebates, credit card companies have turned a once fledgling industry (remember MasterCharge?) into a multibillion-dollar juggernaut. While taking advantage of credit card rewards can be a financial boon, care must be taken that fees and default interest rates do not ensnare us. Let's take a look at those fees and interest rates by examining a popular credit card -- the Discover More card, Wildlife Edition.
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Posted
Jul 29 2008, 04:28 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. With the prices of food and gas where they are, everyone's looking for an edge. For more and more people, myself included, that edge is in maximizing what you can get out of credit card cash-back reward programs. Credit card companies charge vendors a hefty percentage to process credit card transactions (AMEX and Discover charge the most; that's why they often have the best cash-back programs), so doesn't it make sense that they pass along some of that to you? Of course it does. Here are eight tips I use to ensure I get the most cash back from credit cards:
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Posted
Jul 25 2008, 07:23 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from Joseph S. Enoch at partner blog ConsumerAffairs.com. More than 30,000 consumers have deluged the Federal Reserve Board's public comment system with opinions on the agency's proposed rules to addresses abusive credit card practices, according to the Consumer Federation of America. This is the second largest number of public comments the Federal Reserve has ever received, trailing the reform of the mortgage brokers, said Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the not-for-profit federation. The public comment period ends Aug. 4.
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