Whether you’ve got one credit card in your wallet or 13, whether you carry a balance or always pay your full bill on time, big changes happening to the way banks and credit card companies do business will affect you. What can you do? At the very least, you really ought to take a few [...]
Credit Cards
Researchers have found that—get this—if you’re unlucky enought to carry a certain gene in your DNA, you’re a lot more likely to have credit card debt. The study prompts the question: Is buying $300 jeans in your genes?
You’d think there would be at least one or two credit card issuers out there that weren’t totally trying to rip off customers. But you’d be wrong.
The final provisions of new credit card legislation aimed at protecting consumers won’t go into effect until February. What this means is that right now, while consumers are relatively unprotected, credit card companies are raising rates and adding fees to reap in as much profit as possible from their customers before such strategies are outlawed. [...]
Poker teaches important lessons about saving and investing. Foreclosures are better than mortgage modification programs. Debit card overdraft fees are good for consumers. PMS is responsible for impulse purchases. There is no shortage of strange theories out there—and some of them are actually plausible.
Banks have grown accustomed to reaping in big bucks off of overdraft fees—$35 or so assessed each time a customer uses a debit card when there’s not enough money in the account to cover the tab. This year, banks are expected to take in more than $38 billion (!) in such fees.
You’d think that a credit card customer who pays his or her bill on time is a good customer. But these customers don’t make the banks and credit card companies money—at least not enough of it.
The growing list of hard-times, recession-era words and phrases like mancession and recession porn welcomes a new member: “unbanked.” If the word applies to you, you might be paying nearly 1000% interest on short-term loans.
The recession has been a major kick in the pants—but is that exactly what you needed? For folks who underwent big career shifts they were more or less forced to make, and who are happy about the changes, the answer is most definitely yes.
Can your credit card company increase your minimum payment? Close your account when they feel like it? Cut your credit limit? Change your fixed rate to a variable rate? The answer is yes to all of the above.
