Basics

The biggest story coming out of the 2013 holiday shopping season wasn’t a wildly popular toy, new model of smartphone or even the crush of shoppers on Black Friday. The biggest story was the major credit card data breach that occurred at some of the most popular retailers in the United States. The highest profile example involves Target, and individuals who shopped at U.S. Target stores between November 27 and December 15 had their credit and debit card information stolen – approximately 40 million card numbers in all. Additional data breaches at Nieman Marcus and other retailers resulted in millions...

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You’ve read about it. You’ve heard about it. But credit card fraud happens to other people, not to you, right? Unfortunately, According to Javelin Strategy & Research, in 2011 there were 9.64 million people who were victimized by fraud where someone used their credit card or credit card number without their authorization. If you don’t catch the fraud quickly, the debt can add up and become a real headache. There are many reasons to review your credit card statement each month. Of course you want to track your expenses and stay on budget. However, another critical reason to review your...

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Any time you go shopping for a new home loan, car loan or credit card, you’re likely to encounter a lot of “fine print” on the loan or credit agreement. While it’s a good idea to understand all of the terms you’re agreeing to, some terms deserve more of your focus. One of the most important terms of any credit arrangement, and the one that will impact your cost of borrowing most directly, is the annual percentage rate (or “APR”) of the loan. What is APR? Annual Percentage Rate is a numerical description of the interest rate that you effectively pay...

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After the market meltdown of late 2008 and early 2009, interest rates dropped to near historic lows. While these low rates are bad news for savers and anyone depending on interest income, low rates are beneficial to borrowers. But even when lending rates are low, it’s important to understand all applicable finance charges you may face, so that you can be confident you are getting the best deal and staying within your budget.

Finance Charge Basics. In general terms, a “finance charge” is the fee that you pay to a lender in order to borrow money or use a line...

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Modern-day banking is far more convenient than it was just a decade or two ago. We can manage our accounts, pay our bills and get account information without ever having to leave our computers. Most banks have also released outstanding mobile applications so that we are no longer tied to our computers to access our online banking and credit card accounts. But this convenience is based on having secure passwords to access our accounts. When we login, this password is the only thing that the bank uses to verify who we are. It’s therefore absolutely essential to our financial security...

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Credit card fraud continues to be a significant problem throughout the U.S. Even though financial liability is limited for any unauthorized activity on an account, dealing with the fraud can cost a significant amount of time and stress. Furthermore, a compromised credit card account can sometimes be an indication of a larger threat to financial security – identity theft. So while there are a number of legal rules in place to protect consumers, it’s essential that one takes charge and does everything possible to guard against credit card fraud. Here is some credit card advice on six relatively pain-free ways to...

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There are many different rites of passage that individuals use to measure their achievements in the financial world. A child getting their first savings account, a student paying off their student loans, and getting approved for a first home mortgage are all notable milestones. For many people, you can probably add getting their first credit card to that list of achievements. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to obtain your first credit card, and the path to doing so is not always clear. For many people it’s difficult to establish creditworthiness if they’ve never had credit extended to them before. Here is...

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If you’re like most people, then there’s a good chance you received at least a few gift cards during the recent Christmas and holiday gift giving seasons. Each year it seems that gift cards are an increasingly popular option for people who may be pressed for time, aren’t sure what to give as gifts or simply want to let the recipient choose a gift themselves. So now that you have a small stack of gift cards, what do you do with them? If the gift cards are for stores that you don’t normally shop at, for example, you may feel...

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For most of us, our credit cards are an important part of managing our overall finances. Provided that we don’t change our buying habits and purchase on credit unnecessarily, using credit cards can save us the hassle of using cash or checks. In addition, receiving a monthly statement from the credit card company makes it easy to review all the purchases you made in the prior month (and know what to adjust if you’re not meeting your budget). But credit cards need to be protected. Credit card fraud remains a significant problem, and even if the anti-fraud protections reduce our financial...

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Each year it seems that we do more and more of our shopping with credit cards. It’s hard to argue against the convenience of swiping a credit card over writing a check at (or making sure that you bring enough cash to) the grocery store. And it’s very difficult to try to purchase anything from an online merchant by a method other than a credit card. But unlike those other methods of payment, credit cards are subject to more problems and vulnerabilities when it comes to unknown or unauthorized charges showing up on your account. If you think that there’s...

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