Credit Cards

How To Rebuild Credit After Bankruptcy

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Filing bankruptcy hammers your credit score. In addition to all of your credit lines being marked as discharged in bankruptcy, the bankruptcy itself counts against your credit score. Fortunately, your credit begins rebuilding immediately. Unfortunately, you might not be getting all of the “credit” you deserve. Credit Lines Closed in Bankruptcy For some people who file bankruptcy, the process ends with every line of credit they have being discharged. At this point, no payments of any kind are made to the creditors, and their financial life starts over. However, many people end up continuing to make payments on certain credit lines. For example, if you have a car loan, and you want to keep your car, you have to keep making payments or it will be repossessed by the lender. (A bankruptcy erases the loan, it does not erase the right to collect the collateral that you secured the loan with.) If the loan was discharged in bankruptcy, the lender will no longer attempt to collect the debt. You have to make payments on your own. In addition, the lender will no longer report any information about your payments (good or bad) to the credit bureaus, so you won’t get …

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All Three Credit Reports Free

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Credit reports are a very important, and very frustrating part of personal finance. Nearly all financing requires a credit score, which is generated from the information in your credit report. However, you get no say in what is in your credit report. In fact, with one exception, you have to pay money if you even want to see what your own credit report says about you. Seems unfair? Blame the millions of dollars the finance industry spends on lobbying and the politicians that care more about where their next campaign contribution comes from than about what is right for the American citizens they supposedly represent. There are various services springing up to help fill this gap, but they all come with the potential for scams and abuse. You can get a free credit score from Credit Karma, or Credit Sesame, and you can buy a credit score from myFICO, but none of these come with full access to all three credit reports. Free Credit Scores Website The one (and only) thing the government has ever required the credit bureaus to do is give each person free access to their credit report, but only once per year. To comply the three …

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Debit Card Fraud Protection Gets Better

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One growing method of card fraud and theft is stealing credit card or debit cards and their PIN numbers. Unlike swiping a credit card, not all financial institutions that issue debit or credit cards offer a zero-liability guarantee to users who enter a PIN number. The idea is that the PIN number itself offers security. Unfortunately, that is becoming less true. Today, sophisticated reader devices are attached by thieves to ATM machines, gas pumps, or other devices that accept cards. These attachments do not impede the ability for the real machine to read the card. That way, you have no idea that your transaction did not go as planned. However, your card information has been copied, and coupled with a small camera that watches you enter your PIN, the thieves have everything they need to empty your account. Although it was eventually revealed that the recent breach at Target did not compromise PIN numbers, no one was very sure of that fact in the beginning. In other words, having your card information and PIN stolen is a real risk. MasterCard Steps Up MasterCard announced on May 28, that it will offer (and by extension everyone who issues MasterCards) the same zero-liability …

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Is Paying Off Debt Better Than Investing?

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As a former financial planner I know that not all finance is just about the math. The truth is that earning money, spending money, and saving money is a highly emotional thing. While it is fine to suggest that people eliminate emotion when dealing with money, that’s a little bit like telling people to eliminate hunger when dealing with dieting, it just won’t work in the long run. Is It Better to Save Money or Pay Off Debt? One of the things that gets thrown around like a solid, no-exceptions, rocket science idea from time to time is the concept of paying off debt as a high, guaranteed return. The theory goes a little something like this: If you pay off a credit card with an 18 percent interest rate, then that is like getting a guaranteed 18% return on your investment. Obviously, a sure thing 18 percent return is probably the best possible investment in the world from a risk/return perspective. But, is it really that simple? Mathematically, paying off higher interest debt is always the right move. However, that isn’t necessarily always the best move for real life, particularly if your finances are not in very good shape …

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Legit Free Trial Offers

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There are a lot of ways that businesses squeak through the door of legally sufficient, while staying far outside the realm of generally fair. One of the areas that comes up repeatedly as a source of customer discontent is the free trial offer tricks companies pull on unsuspecting consumers. Free Trial Offer Scam The free trial offer scam generally relies on a disconnect between what the legally agreed upon terms in the fine print state, and the general understanding that a reasonable person has about what a free trial is. For most people, a free trial means that you get to try something out for free. Everyone knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch, however. Most people understand that the point of the free trial is to get you to sign up for the paid version going forward. What most people don’t notice, is that they actually already signed up for the paid version when they agreed to the free trial. In other words, you aren’t really getting a free trial. What you are really doing is signing up for a full subscription with the first month free, and a limited free cancellation period. That doesn’t …

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BillGuard Safe and Legit?

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BillGuard is an online financial services company that monitors your credit cards for fraudulent charges. On the surface, this sounds like something you don’t need. After all, if you see credit fraud on your bill you are going to do something about it. However, in this fast-paced world, it is all too common for people to neglect to verify all of their charges, especially the smaller ones. BillGuard Scam? First, I like to see if something is a scam before looking further. After all, if you are throwing your money away, it really doesn’t matter how good of a job they do. In this case, there are some concerns, but it would be hard to call the service a scam. No credit card number or PayPal account is required, so there is no way for the company to charge you for some subscription or offer. Second, the company never asks for your Social Security number either. It does ask for some usernames and passwords, but we’ll get to that in a second. Finally, the company just raised $10 million from some well-known venture capitalists. That doesn’t mean, in itself, that the company is legitimate. However, there are a lot of …

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Granite Credit Card Review

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Getting a credit card with poor credit is no easy task. Credit card debt is easily wiped away in bankruptcy. Furthermore, because most credit cards are unsecured, banks and card issuers have little recourse to collect the unpaid balance other than reporting negative information to the credit bureaus. People with poor credit aren’t as likely to see that as a motivation to pay up. Be sure to monitor your credit score on an ongoing basis so you know if it is getting better or worse. Residents of the U.S. can use online credit score reporting services like Credit Karma to monitor credit scores free. Check out the CreditKarma review here on Finance Gourmet for more details. Granite Card Review The granite Credit Card is available to residents of the UK who are not legally restricted from obtaining credit. The card is issued by Vanquis Bank, which bills itself as a financial institution that can help with credit repair. It is a Visa card which ensures wide acceptance at most retailers that take credit cards. As you might expect from a credit card for people with low credit scores, the Granite Card is not cheap. The variable interest rate is currently …

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Latest Citibank ThankYou Rewards Premier Card Offer

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Over at one of my favorite deal news websites, I noticed that Citibank is offering a bunch of bonus points for people who sign up for their ThankYou Premier rewards card as its latest Citi rewards card offer. As regular readers know, I don’t recommend that people go chasing after credit card rewards or applying for new credit cards just to get credit card points or miles. If, on the other hand, you are currently in the market for a new credit card AND you are looking for a rewards credit card, this offer might be interesting. First, off, be sure to read all of the fine print in the credit card agreement as well as my Citibank ThankYou Premier rewards card review. On of the big things you will want to note is that this card comes with a very steep annual fee. That should knock it out of the running for most people, but if you tend to rack up a lot of spending on a card for whatever reason, you might be able to make money by earning more rewards than you pay for the annual fee. Second, although the ad claims that you can get $500 …

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Citibank Rewards Credit Card Offers: Premier Card

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Citibank updates its credit card rewards programs from time to time and when it discontinues an old rewards program like the Citibank PremierPass rewards card, it moves those customers to one of its current Citibank rewards credit cards. One of the many cards that offer the company’s branded rewards program called Thank You Rewards, is the Citi ThankYou Premier card. (Note: Citibank is the official name, although some people look for City Bank MasterCard or City Bank rewards when trying to find out more information.) Is the Citibank Premier Card a good rewards card? Let’s take a look. First, the Citi ThankYou Premier Card comes with a $125 annual fee PLUS ANOTHER $50 fee for each authorized user. That means a husband and wife credit card account with Citibank for this card will run an eye-popping $175 per year just for the annual fee. It’s waived for the first year, but otherwise, that is a pretty solid strike against any credit card offer unless it has a lot of benefits to back it up. Don’t look for a great interest rate to offset that big annual fee. The terms and conditions list the rates as 13.99% , 17.99% , or …

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Online Banking Security Internet Privacy

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When it comes to protecting your privacy online, nothing is more important than a good browser data clearing tool. Deleting your cookies through a web browser’s interface hasn’t been good enough for a long time. Fortunately, utilities like CCleaner and Glary Utilities as well as Firefox add-ons and Chrome extensions fill the need to completely clear your private data from browser cache, flash cookies, and so on. What we need now is a way to manually and selectively protect certain cookies from cleaning. A lot of banks and financial institutions are requiring users to take an extra step when accessing their account information from a new computer that has never accessed the site before. For example, Chase Bank, which handles the Amazon Rewards Visa Card, requires users to get an authentication code via text message or email to one of the numbers or addresses on record with the account in order to log in from a new computer. Bank Login Register Computer First Online banking customers at ING have to answer one or more of their extra security questions in order to access their high-interest online savings account or online checking account. This extra layer of security helps prevent hackers …

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