Personal Finance Beyond Credit Cards and Balance Transfers

By Aaron Crowe

Somewhere deep in every home office, thrown in haphazardly or filed semi-neatly in a file drawer, are years' worth of tax returns and records that support them.

Sooner or later the files get so big that the drawer or cabinet is busting open, creating a paper mess that could be explored on A&E's "Hoarders" TV show. My one file drawer of old tax files probably isn't enough to get my office profiled on the show, but I don't want to take any chances. I'm cleaning it up...

By Justin Boyle

Chase is helping your travel dollar get even more mileage with its latest rewards partnership. The company's Ultimate Rewards plan, considered by many to be among the best credit card reward programs available today, has added the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards frequent flier program as its newest points transfer partner...

By Megg Mueller

If you're going to rob Peter to pay Paul, why would you want to pay a fee? The whole idea is to save some money, stave off debt … why incur more charges? Balance transfer fees are pretty standard across credit cards; move your balance to a new card and you're usually going to pay 3 percent to 5 percent of your transfer amount. While that often still makes better sense, as long as you're dropping your interest rate on that money dramatically, it's still a drag to get dinged for giving your business to another credit card.

A number of cards offer zero percent interest on balance transfers for a specific time frame (12 months for instance) but right now Discover More Card has a zero percent balance transfer promotion that is offering that plus no balance transfer fee...

By Aaron Crowe

The start of a new year is a chance to start with a clean slate and plan for a better year ahead. If your finances didn't fare so well in the previous year, it can be a time to rethink your approach and give yourself a financial checkup to ensure you're on the right path.

An annual financial checkup doesn't require hiring a financial adviser or an investment broker to go over your documents. It can be done at home with a few hours of planning. Here are some things to go over...

By Justin Boyle

This holiday season, I had a chance to catch up with some members of my extended family. I learned that a musician cousin of mine (let's call him Mark) had recently pulled himself back from the brink of bankruptcy and gotten his debt under control, which (no offense, Mark!) came as a small surprise.

I called Mark in Key West, to congratulate him as well as try and learn his secret. There were some pretty standard money management techniques involved, like consolidating debt and hunting up the best savings account rates and credit card APRs he could find, but there was another piece of the puzzle that I think merits sharing. For the past two years, Mark had been doing something he called "micro-saving." ...

By Megg Mueller

Here's a newsflash: Hackers can wreak havoc for credit card owners. As tales of identity theft and stolen credit cards become a seemingly almost everyday occurrence, you may be unclear what to do to protect yourself from high-tech thieves. And thieves thrive on your confusion.

I read about the Christmas Day attack on American think-tank Strategic Forecasting, a company that gives its clients political, economic and military analysis…all in the name of helping them reduce risk. The group that claimed responsibility was hacking group named Anonymous. The hack compromised the credit card numbers and personal information of more than 50,000 accounts of people who do business with Stratfor clients, such as Apple and the U.S. Air Force, according to CNET News.