January 15, 2010 – 5:48 pm
Booking your spring break trip to Cancun soon? Here’s something to keep in mind: Almost every major credit card carries an “international conversion surcharge” of up to 5 percent on every purchase you charge in a foreign country. The fee isn’t listed separately on your bill so you wouldn’t even know anything fishy was afoot [...]
January 14, 2010 – 10:10 am
If you’re working on Capitol Hill, you may have joined us Tuesday for our webinar on credit markets and personal credit history. In line with that topic, there’s good news on the horizon for consumers concerned about the effect credit scores have on the terms they’re offered from a lender. Starting in January of 2011, [...]
December 23, 2009 – 3:38 pm
Hannah’s post yesterday on how to get out of credit-card debt referenced the Federal Reserve’s most recent Survey of Consumer Finances, which is full of fascinating data about which households are the most likely to be in debt. Overall, 46.1 percent of American households reported holding debt on credit cards. But a look at who [...]
December 22, 2009 – 4:20 pm
Welcome to this week’s edition of our Tuesday Top 5, Econ4U’s weekly tips post to help you manage your money in five easy steps. I was recently reviewing the Survey of Consumer Finances, published earlier this year using data from 2007. I thought it was interesting that only 46.2 percent of American households reported having credit-card [...]
December 21, 2009 – 4:38 pm
Just in time for Christmas, First Premier Bank is out with a new credit card that offers rates as low as – 80 percent! It’s no mistake. This credit card’s interest rate is 79.9 percent. […] So for a $300 balance, a cardholder would pay about $20 a month in interest. The rate is the [...]
December 16, 2009 – 4:13 pm
We’ve written recently about credit reports, credit scores, and how you can go about improving both. These topics are on the minds of many Americans as they balance their gift lists with their bank accounts during the Christmas season. But buyers beware – those good sales that stores offer through their brand-name credit cards could [...]
December 4, 2009 – 2:29 pm
A growing number of Toys “R” Us shoppers on the East Coast have come forward to say that in the scrum of Black Friday sales, the toy retailer charged them twice by accident. Sales errors have been reported in New York, Florida, and Georgia, with more complaints coming in as consumers check their statements, but Toys [...]
November 24, 2009 – 7:05 pm
Welcome to this week’s edition of Tuesday Top 5, our weekly tips post to help you manage your money in five easy steps. While $1,000 may seem like a genuine chunk of change, in reality it’s not hard to save up that much with a little discipline. You’d save that much by giving up your daily [...]
November 17, 2009 – 6:40 pm
Welcome to this week’s edition of Tuesday Top 5, our weekly tips post to help you manage your money in five easy steps. Today we walk you through the all-important credit report, and what to do if you find inaccurate information on it. Your credit report plays a major role in determining your credit score, so [...]
October 27, 2009 – 11:48 am
Welcome to this week’s edition of Tuesday Top 5, our new weekly tips post to help you manage your money in five easy steps. Do you know what your credit score is? You should: It’s the most important factor in getting a loan. But what can you do if your FICO score looks more like your shoe [...]
