Search results for credit cards
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Posted
Sep 23 2009, 09:00 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Zut alors! Credit card companies are beginning to offer simpler, more consumer-friendly credit cards to the masses.
For instance, Bank of America's Basic Visa card, which debuts next month, will charge the same interest rate no matter how you use the card. It also comes with a set $39 late fee that won't fluctuate regardless of how large your outstanding balance is.
Also, Jack at Master Your Card said, the interest rate won't go up even if you make a late payment.
Even better, it seems, is Chase's new Blueprint feature, newly available for some 20 million existing credit card accounts. Blueprint allows cardholders to single out certain types of purchases -- say, groceries or gas -- that they can pay in full each month interest-free while finance charges accumulate on the rest of the balance.
Why are card companies trying to make things easier for us? In part, they're trying to get ahead of the curve before new credit card rules kick in. The Washington Post offered another possible explanation:
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Posted
Sep 22 2009, 02:56 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Frank Curmudgeon at Bad Money Advice.
I still don't get the debit card thing. But according to The Wall Street Journal, there is a new trend I do understand: establishments accepting cards but not cash.
Slips of paper and metal disks are an inefficient and archaic form of money. You have to go to an ATM to get some, and often pay a fee. To use it, you have to wait for the clerk to make change. You have to carry it around. And then there is the growing pile of coins most of us have at home.
And don't get me started on parking meters. Offering me a nice parking space for half an hour in exchange for a quarter, and only in exchange for a quarter, is more scavenger hunt than transaction.
Plastic pushing out paper has been a long brewing trend. I can remember when grocery stores didn't take cards. I still feel a little funny charging things there. Today we take for granted that we can use plastic just about anywhere, even in places, like taxicabs, that a generation ago would have seemed implausible as potential users of cards.
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Posted
Sep 21 2009, 04:33 PM
by
Teresa Mears
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Ann Minch, the California woman who took her fight over a credit card rate increase to YouTube, apparently has extracted the concession she sought from Bank of America.
In a new video posted Saturday, she said Bank of America had agreed to return the interest rate on her $5,943.34 balance, which had been hiked to 30%, to 12.99%. The bank's first offer was 16.99%, which she said she rejected.
She said she was contacted by Jeff Crawford, senior vice president of existing credit card accounts, who was polite. He didn't mention either her video or her "taxpayers' revolt" -- which she says is not over.
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Posted
Sep 18 2009, 01:10 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Here's a statistic that should give us all pause: The average credit card debt of seniors grew by 26% between 2005 and 2008, CreditCards.com reports. For the rest of us, the increase was a comparatively modest 3%.
Also, CreditCards.com says: "According to a study (.pdf file) released in July 2009 by New York City-based Demos, a public policy group, consumers 65 and older carried $10,235 in average card debt last year." That is a lot.
And that's very troubling, considering that so many retirees are living on Social Security and no other savings, and face considerable medical expenses despite government-run Medicare. The dreaded "doughnut hole" is just a drop in the bucket compared with the other potential health care-related demands on their money.
Bing: Do you have to pay your parents' debt?
What's happening here?
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Posted
Sep 17 2009, 11:55 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Ashley Baxter has good cause to be worried about her friend. The woman has gone on a major plastic spending spree since she became unemployed five months ago.
We'd heard that such people exist but hadn't run across a case quite like this. It's one thing to maintain your normal standard of living for appearance's sake when you're jobless. That's bad. But this seems worse. Along with the $40 lunches, $300 eyelash extensions and extremely expensive handbags, the friend is now committed to an extra $300 in monthly payments on debt that she didn't have when she was working, Ashley writes at SpendOnLife.
Those aren't living expenses, folks. Is a credit card intervention in order?
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Posted
Sep 15 2009, 05:44 PM
by
Teresa Mears
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Ann Minch is mad as hell and she's not going to take it anymore.
Like many, she has seen the interest rate on her credit card jacked up (in her case, to 30%), even though she made all the payments on time, wasn't over her limit and didn't in any way violate Bank of America's rules. She had been making the minimum payment on her account for years, about $130 a month.
After trying, and failing, to get the interest rate reduced, she has, in her words "fired the first shot in the debtors' revolution" by refusing to pay another cent of her $5,943.34 debt unless Bank of America returns the interest rate to its previous level, 12.99%. She has staked out her position in this YouTube video, which has circulated widely on the Internet and has been viewed more than 150,000 times.
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Posted
Sep 10 2009, 11:50 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from James Limbach at partner site ConsumerAffairs.com.
If you're an affluent American, chances are you've seen more offers of MasterCard World or Visa Signature -- the so-called premium credit cards -- in your mailbox recently.
Mintel Comperemedia, a provider of direct-marketing information, reports that credit card issuers are advertising more premium cards in an effort to attract the best customers.
In the second quarter of this year, credit card issuers sent 28% more marketing direct-mail offers for premium cards than they did the quarter before. This occurred even as issuers reduced credit card offers as a whole by 8%.
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Posted
Sep 10 2009, 08:20 AM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This guest post comes from Frank Curmudgeon at Bad Money Advice.
I have a debit card. I think. It's the ATM card my bank gave me. It's got the MasterCard symbol on it, so I think that means I can use it to buy stuff. Of course, this is just a theory. In the 10 years it's been in my wallet I've never thought to test it out. Why would I?
I am going to admit right here that I am pretty obviously missing something when it comes to debit cards. Debit card transactions now outnumber credit card transactions. This mystifies me. I can think of only three reasons to carry a debit card rather than a credit card.
- You are considered a poor credit risk and cannot get a credit card.
- You can get a credit card but will not because of ethical or religious objections.
- You find it too difficult to overcome the temptation to borrow more than you should if you carry a credit card, so carry a debit card that will limit your spending to cash you actually have.
I can't get my head around how half the transactions in the country could be made by people in one of these categories. I know credit standards are tighter than they used to be, but I am sure that the vast majority of folks can get a credit card if they ask nicely. Ethical and religious objections can't cover very many more.
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Posted
Sep 03 2009, 03:21 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from James Limbach at partner site ConsumerAffairs.com.
Are you happy with your credit card? If not, you have a lot of company.
Driven by a significant decrease in satisfaction with fees and rates, overall credit card customer satisfaction declined to a three-year low, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Credit Card Satisfaction Study.
The study finds that overall credit card customer satisfaction fell to 703 on a 1,000-point scale -- the lowest level since the study's inception in 2007. Overall satisfaction among credit card customers remains the lowest among the financial services industries in which J.D. Power and Associates conducts research, including insurance, banking and investment services.
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Posted
Sep 03 2009, 11:56 AM
by
Karen Datko
Money Blog: Smart Spending Blog - MSN Money
Don Godding didn't review his credit card statements each month. He simply mailed a $200 minimum payment and called it good.
So he didn't realize that someone had fraudulently charged about $11,000 to his account over two months or that his balance had shot up to $18,000, according to TheDenverChannel.com. And, because of two other mistakes he made, he's on the hook for that amount, plus interest.
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