Understand how to use credit responsibly before you get your first credit card. Credit card language can be scary, especially for students getting their first credit cards. Principal? Fixed Rate of Interest? Default rate? What? Yet these mysterious terms can be mastered and the average young person can become a king or queen of credit! Or at the very least, new-to-credit consumers and … [Read more...]
Applying for Student Loans and Avoiding the Debt Trap
Applying for student loans doesn’t have to put you in debt for the rest of your life. Everyone’s talking about the student loan bubble, how it could be the next financial crisis and how it is saddling a whole generation of students with soul-crushing debt. It’s enough to make applying for student loans a serious downer. Getting a post-secondary education can be one of the best investments … [Read more...]
Credit Score Guide: How to Get the Financial Respect You Deserve
From getting the money you need to landing a job, your credit score is more important than you may know What’s one of the biggest differences between the rich and poor in America, something that almost defines wealth and opportunity? It’s access to credit. It’s that ability to get the money you need, when you need it and at an interest rate that you can afford. The Census Bureau reports … [Read more...]
The Secret Way Auto Insurers Increase Your Premiums
Your auto insurance credit score is a little-known tool insurers use to increase your premiums With car insurance mandatory in almost every state, you would hope that fairness in insurance pricing would be a given. You’d be surprised and a 2007 law made it legal for insurance companies to increase your premiums based on something completely unrelated to your driving record. If you haven’t … [Read more...]
Guide to Credit Cards: 5 Sneaky Ways Credit Cards Get You to Overspend
Credit card companies have $25 billion reasons to get you to overspend. Use this guide to credit cards to understand all the sneaky ways they do it. Visa and Mastercard booked $25.9 billion in revenue last year. That’s money moved from your pocket to theirs through interest, annual fees and other charges. And that’s just the top two credit card companies. The industry books hundreds of … [Read more...]