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Posted
Jul 01 2008, 05:00 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Blogger Rosalind Mays gave her kids credit cards. What? Is she nuts? They're only in sixth grade or thereabouts. Explaining one of the more interesting methods we've encountered for teaching kids about money, she writes in a post at Real Life Debt: "But the catch was (cause there is always a catch), I became Visa. I've always wanted to be a banking giant."
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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 11 2008, 03:03 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Sometimes a good way to learn is to examine other people's mistakes. Lately, personal-finance bloggers have written about two doozies. "Mrs. Accountability" at Out of Debt Again tells the story of Nancy, a woman she met about six years ago when both were poor and living in a trailer park. Nancy's life changed when her mother died. The will specified that some of the estate be used to buy Nancy a condo free and clear.
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Posted
Jun 10 2008, 05:41 AM
by
Karen Datko
This post comes from partner blog Blueprint for Financial Prosperity. Some of my friends put a rubber band around one wrist if they're supposed to remember something, like getting milk on the way home. Some of my friends send themselves e-mail or schedule events in Outlook. Some of my friends draw treasure maps and hide them behind paintings in their attics. (OK. No, they don't. That was from "The Goonies.") The point is, we all have little hacks we use to remind ourselves about things we are supposed or not supposed to do.
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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 14 2008, 04:35 PM
by
Karen Datko
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Do you automatically think that "budget" is the name of a rental-car company? Chances are you have a problem with spending. A post by Ron at The Wisdom Journal identifies 24 signs to look for to determine if you're a mega-consumer. He said he was inspired to write the post after his kids noticed that someone they know has four yard sales a year and asked, "How much stuff do they have?" Another sign: "You cannot fit anything else in your garage -- and you don't even have your car in there."
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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 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
Rating:
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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Posted
Mar 17 2008, 06:50 AM
by
Karen Datko
This post comes from J.D. Roth at partner blog Get Rich Slowly. "To develop a better understanding of the wise use of credit, let's spend a few minutes with a certain individual we'll call 'Mr. Money,'" suggests the narrator in "The Wise Use of Credit," a short video created in 1960 by Sutherland Educational Films. In this film, produced with help from the National Consumer Finance Association (which is now the American Financial Services Association), Mr. Money teaches John and Judy the ins and outs of credit. His advice is familiar to most of us:
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