Warning: Those unused credit cards could cost you!

Many of us have them: unused credit cards that we opened for whatever reason that we don’t use anymore and just have stuffed in a sock drawer or a desk. We may keep them because we think it will hurt our credit scores to cancel them, or for emergencies, or just because we are too [...]

Chase: Just because your rate is fixed doesn’t mean we can’t add new fees!

Here’s a gem for you, courtesy of USAToday.com: apparently Chase is assessing new fees and raising minimum payments on credit card customers who are floating balances under promotional fixed rates.

In the latest fee rolled out by a bank, JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest card issuer, has begun charging hundreds of thousands of borrowers a [...]

Get a life! Financially, that is…

There was an interesting series of tips over on CNNMoney entitled Get a Financial Life. It lays out a series of tips to get your financial house in order in 7 short weeks, with one task per week. Here are their tips, and my thoughts on them.

Talk about your goals with your partner. If [...]

Don’t get burned on your credit card balance transfer!

Here is a cautionary tale from our friend at Debt to Dreams. Our friend was apparently playing the credit card arbitrage game, which is where you take a no/low fee balance transfer at 0% on your credit card and put the money in an insured savings account to earn interest. It is a great game [...]

Chase reallocated my credit lines unsolicited!

I have a very odd letter from Chase yesterday about my credit card accounts with them. For whatever reason they decided to review my credit card accounts and reallocate credit limits between two of them. They decided to take $2,000 from a Flexible Rewards Visa that I hardly ever use and add it to my [...]

My brother-in-law’s trash feeds Mexico!

Several months ago I posted about my brother-in-law’s refusal to shred his personal papers, including credit card statements. At the time I warned that he was just asking for trouble, and it looks like that trouble has finally hit. On one of the cards he rarely uses he suddenly noticed several charges on his account [...]

So does this mean the dog won’t get pre-approved credit card offers anymore?

Well, I guess the credit insanity had to end sometime. One of the areas where logic seemed to go out the window long ago was with respect to credit cards. For a long time it seemed like there were at least five pre-approved offers in the mail every day. But perhaps the fun is now [...]

The Interest Rate Cut and the Death of the App-O-Rama

As most everyone is aware now, the Federal Reserve this week dropped the Federal Funds rate by 75 basis points (0.75%). This is great for borrowers, but not so great for savers. Several online banks have already dropped their high yield online savings accounts drastically in response to the cut. This is on top of [...]

Is Discover Card relevant anymore?

Back in the day, Discover Card was the king of the rewards credit cards, if for nothing else because it was nearly the only reward credit card. I remember how it was promoted with the tagline “The card that pays you back.”

Well, fast forward to today and Discover is far from the only player [...]

Chase Professional Card – You’ll apply if we mail you the application times four?

Nothing really important with this post, but still funny. In the mail today I got a pre-approved application for the Chase Professional Card. In its infinite wisdom, Chase must have known that the offer wouldn’t initially appeal to me, so they sent me three more pre-approved applications for the card on the same day. I [...]