Act quickly to take advantage of Discover's zero percent balance transfer card

By Jim Sloan

Zero balance transfer credit cards make sense if you have one or more high-interest credit cards that you're having trouble whittling down. One of the best offers for balance transfer credit cards is coming from Discover - what makes this offer so special?

Setting the industry standard

Discover's offers are so good, in fact, that some analysts credit the company with helping bring down average balance fees for the entire credit card industry. The average balance fee dropped from 3.5 percent in December, 2010 to 3.36 percent in January 2011, and balance transfer fees are now 0.5 percent less than they were six months ago. What's more, the length of most balance transfers is increasing.

Discover Card's no balance transfer fee offer

The Discover More card with no balance transfer fee allows you to transfer up to four balances into one account, and for a limited time is offering a zero percent rate on balance transfers for 12 months, plus no balance transfer fee. According to the Baltimore Sun, there is also a zero percent interest rate on purchases in the first six months.

For a limited amount of time, Discover is also offering an additional Discover More card with a 24 month promotional balance transfer which carries a 5 percent balance transfer fee for those who might need more than a year to pay down their credit

By Joe Taylor Jr.

Take care of your credit, and credit card companies will want to take care of you.

Banks have put together some hard-to-find credit card offers to attract consumers with high FICO scores. If you've built a strong credit history, you can earn unusually high cash back rebates, travel perks, and low interest rates on balance transfers. According to CardRatings.com, five credit cards rank highest at offering great perks to consumers with excellent credit:

1. Discover More Card--Over the past few years, Discover Card has made some of the boldest moves to attract more consumers with high credit scores. Earn this card, and you can enjoy a zero percent balance transfer for 18 months with just a 4 percent transfer fee. During your first six months with the card, you'll pay no interest on purchases while earning between 1-5 percent in Cashback Bonus rewards.
2. Simmons Visa Platinum--You've probably never heard of Simmons Bank, and they're probably okay with that. Simmons saves its credit card invitations for consumers with the very highest credit scores. Apply via one of their credit card applications online, and you can surf your other debt to a Visa card with an APR as low as 7.25 percent and no balance transfer fee.
3. Fidelity Investment Rewards American Express Card--One of the best cash back credit cards on the market requires you to maintain a brokerage account at Fidelity Investments. If your FICO score
   

By MoneyBlueBook

Dating is like walking on a minefield: You never know what your next step will bring. Now to make it even harder, dating experts are adding a new twist.

It used to be as easy as intuition, dinner and a movie, but now experts say that financial compatibility is an important factor in finding the right person. If turns out that if the man or woman you are dating is a financial mess, they can take you down with them.

If you survived the dating battlefield like me and are now married, you probably have some of your own war stories. But if you are still out there in dating never-never land, you may need a little help. I can give you a few tips on how to figure out if your date is a financial dud.

You just have to read the signs:

1. Overspends like crazy

If your date keeps trying to impress you with how much everything they own costs, you might think twice about your future with them. Wild spending can lead to all kinds of financial problems as witnessed by the record number of mortgage defaults and credit card delinquencies seen in the last couple of years. If your date seems overly impressed by their own spending, it may be that they are forgetting an important fact: Eventually they have to pay for it all.

2. Leases to impress

Although it is not a set rule, in most

By Joe Taylor Jr.

If you feel awkward getting asked to open a store credit card when you're shopping for blue jeans, imagine what happens when you get the same offer in the emergency room.

Medical credit card applications abound at the offices of dentists, doctors, and even veterinarians. While relaxed approval processes make these cards appealing to Americans in need of urgent care, critics of medical credit cards warn that the cure for long term medical debt might be worse than the disease. Do these credit cards deserve their bad rap?

How medical credit cards hit the market

It was unheard of for earlier generations of Americans to let medical bills go unpaid. Our parents and grandparents couldn't run the risk of bumping into the neighborhood doctor at church or in the supermarket with outstanding invoices hanging over their heads.

Over the years, deductibles and co-insurance ceilings got larger, forcing health care providers to take on greater risk. Practices got bigger, too, enabling more of us to slide our medical bills to the back of the stack without feeling very guilty. Lenders partnered with medical providers to offer easy applications, using many of the same techniques perfected in retail stores.

Shifting medical credit cards from emergency coverage to elective financing

With finance charges and payment options similar to retail credit cards, most consumers found terms reasonable enough to get them through a crisis. However, the medical credit card market kicked into high gear

By Peter Andrew

I'm not expecting any sympathy, but it's not easy writing product reviews. That's because it's rarely possible to rank different features in a way that's meaningful to everyone.

Take televisions as an example. I badly need a new one, and recently started reading TV reviews. All I've discovered so far is that there isn't a perfect model, or certainly not one in my price range. One has a brilliant picture, but slightly lower sound quality, or vice versa. Another is great except for occasional motion blur during action sequences. Yet more are good, but ugly, and don't fit in with my living room decor. When I eventually come to make a choice, I'll have to decide which of these factors are most important to me personally.

And it's the same with credit cards. I can tell you all about the Chase Sapphire? credit card, but whether it's the best for you will depend on your individual needs and wants. What I can say for sure is that it is a good all-rounder, and that you should almost certainly include it on your list of potential cards.

Not for everyone

But let's begin by identifying those who should think carefully first before including it on their list of possibilities. If your credit score's going through a down patch, the chances of your application for a Chase Sapphire card being accepted are remote. This is a premium product that's reserved for those with great credit.

In

By Peter Andrew

Call me old-fashioned (no, really--everyone else does), but I know next to nothing about the Kardashian sisters. However, even with the tiny amount of knowledge I have, I struggle to picture a family breakfast scene in which Kim, licking maple syrup from her perfectly manicured fingers, glances up from her copy of The Wall Street Journal, and remarks to Khloe and Kourtney: "It says here that analysts are forecasting explosive growth for the prepaid card market. I think we should establish an aggressive presence in that sector."

No, I suspect that some Svengali-like figure on the sisters' business management team persuaded the family that launching the Kardashian Kard was a good idea. And it might be fairer to blame him or her than the girls for the fact that the Kard is likely to end up entering the record books as one of the shortest-lived products in the history of financial services.

Kard killer

The Kard was withdrawn Nov. 30, just three weeks after its glitzy launch. And its cause of death was the sheer weight of negative publicity that followed a blistering attack on it by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. He's quoted as referring to the product's "pernicious and predatory fees," saying, "Among the prepaid debit cards now on the market, the Kardashian Kard is particularly troubling because of its high fees combined with its appeal to financially unsophisticated young adult Kardashian fans. Keeping