Archive for 'Credit Cards' Category

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.

By Aaron Crowe

Balance Transfer Day -- when consumers were urged to send big banks a message by switching their credit cards with money on them to companies that offered lower interest rates -- came and went without much splash on Dec. 11.

"Take that, big banks, we're moving our business to credit cards with balance transfer promotions," or some screech that customers were supposed to make. In other words, moving their business from one credit card to another was supposed to send a message. That's not much of a message of defiance if you're just going from one bank to another...

By Justin Boyle

When I first heard about credit cards with miles promotions, I figured they were a passing fad. Airlines had long offered programs for frequent fliers, allowing them to amass hundreds or thousands of miles per trip taken, and the card companies didn't seem to need the extra incentive to get people to spend on credit.

As it turns out, plans that offer travel points and air miles have grown into some of the best credit card reward programs available today. With some prudent credit management and a little attention to detail, credit cards with miles promotions can help you travel almost anywhere for pennies on the dollar...

By Justin Boyle

Personal finance topics are all over the news these days. I remember watching as public support for November's Bank Transfer Day grew and grew in the month before the event, and consumer response to recently initiated fees at national banks caused more than one news cycle's worth of stories.

Another national money movement set to take place on Dec. 11, 2011, Balance Transfer Day, has been gathering some momentum as the date of the event approaches. The brainchild of a New York-based freelance writer named Michael Germanovsky, Balance Transfer Day encourages people to use zero interest balance transfer promotions to cut down the interest accrued by standard credit cards with money on them...

By Megg Mueller

Standing in a long line at my local big-box book store recently, two thoughts went through my head: (a) I must be the only one who doesn't have an e-reader, and (b) there are two kinds of credit-card users out there; those who have one card, and those who have multiple credit cards.

You could easily see who was who. The one-card shoppers carefully and slowly handed their cards to the cashiers; multiple-card users did a scan of all the cards in their wallets before choosing then quickly handing it over, as if to say, "Don't give me time to change my mind!" I'm thinking that this dichotomy between shoppers is the reason I've been seeing divergent reports on what's happening with the economy and our personal finance choices in general...

By Justin Boyle

Can you make money off of your credit card? For years, I didn't realize that you could.

When I was first introduced to personal banking products such as credit cards and savings accounts decades ago, I spent some idle time wondering if the seemingly tiny percentages called "interest rates" could amount to any kind of real money. I was sort of a math kid, so I worked out that the 1.59 percent APY on the $50 I'd just deposited with my neighborhood bank branch would earn me 79-1/2 cents if I let it sit unspent in my account for a full year. Oh well, I thought, maybe they'll round up that half-penny and I'll get a cool $0.80.

It was a surprise to me to learn, much later, that sharp-eyed, enterprising customers have figured out how to use credit cards to turn earned interest into significant supplemental income...