106 WINNING THE CREDIT-CARD GAME
Some banks are eliminating the standard 25 or 30-day grace period within which you may pay your bill within being charged interest. This is the normal grace period before interest kicks in. But this is slowly changing. For example, some banks are offering extremely low fixed rates, but without a grace period. These cards will charge you interest from the date it processes your charge slip.
If you usally pay your bills in full within the normal grace period, it is best you avoid no-grace-period cards. The 25 or 30-day garce period is more financially significant for you than a lower interest rate. However, if you carry a balance each month, you’re better off with a lower interest rate. In this case, a lower interest rate can save you more money than a grace period would.
Most banks and thrifts charge interest from the day they process your charge slip when you use your card to get cash. In addition to this, some cards are now assessing cash advanced service charges based on a percentage of the amount received. It used to be that service charges were based on a fixed fee, regardless of the amount of transaction.
If you avoid interest charges by paying off your bill each month, seek out a card that offer very low interest rates plus a grace period on purchases. Some institutions periodically offer cards with no fee for the first year as a promotion.
Don’t be lulled into getting 'premium' credit cards such as 'goldcards' and Premier VISA. The only significant premium with these cards is the extra amount you pay in higher annual service fees. Besides the fancy finish of the card, the only other benefits you get with premium cards are travel insurance and the extra protection if your card is lost or stolen. Since by law, you are only liable for up to $50 if your regular credit cards are lost or stolen, the zero liability you are getting from premium cards is hardly worth the extra money.
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THE FREE CREDIT CARD TRAP
They arrive in your mail - a conspicuous looking mail piece from some 'official looking' bank claiming that you have been Pre-Approved for a Mastercard or VISA credit card.
Of course, you don’t have to have any credit. You can even have bad credit or have just filed bankruptcy or even be rated as a 'slow payer.' It doesn’t matter because these companies want to give you a second chance! These companies want to make it easy for you to obtain a credit card because they only want your money!
How the thing works is that you must send $35 to receive an application that provides you with a name and address listing of banks willing to give you a VISA and/or Mastercard without any credit approval. That’s a stiff price to pay for a sheet of paper, don’t you think? The instructions that come with the application will let you know how the scheme works. You must open up a bank account with the bank once that bank approves you. Big deal! They make it appear that you have won some contest or something and people will feel 'good inside' that someone has approved them.
But that’s not all. The minimum amount you must deposit is $200 but you can deposit as much as you want. In return, you get a Mastercard or VISA credit card with a credit limit up to the amount you deposit. Wow! What a great honor! This is no break! Think about it. If a stranger gave you $200 to hold for him until Friday wouldn’t you feel safe in granting them a $200 loan? I mean - it’s their own money you’ve got. If they default, you’ve got the full amount to pay off the loan. It takes a twisted mind to take $200 from you, grant you $200 credit with your own money plus charge you astronomical interest rates just to take the money from your hand and give it back to you. That’s insane!
Of course - to combat this insanity, the great and wonderful banks claim to help fix your credit report. They say that if you maintain payments in a correct fashion, this information will be reported to the credit bureau. Yea, right! When Shell calls the credit bureau to check your credit for a gas credit card, your report shows 47 defaulted loans and a bankruptcy. However, there is one company that you make payments to on-time. Big deal. Don’t you think the rest of your bad credit will still be the deciding factor in Shell’s final decision. You bet you bottom dollar!
Look at this: the bank makes money from the interest of your deposit. The bank also makes money by charging you 18% to 22% interest for the right to use their Mastercard or VISA. Plus the bank is guaranteed their money because if you don’t pay on time, they take the money out of the bank account you opened with them along with any interest you have accumulated.
Why would anyone with $200 to deposit want a credit card with a $200 limit? If you have $200 and want to buy an item for $200 - go out and purchase it. That way, you’ll own it lock, stock and barrel. No interest, no payments, no hassle! Plus, you won’t owe your soul to the company store - sort-of-speak.
Credit is a wonderful thing if you use it intelligently. I know people who charge $100 at the beginning of the month and use that $100 to make $300. It’s free money for 30 days. Then, when the bill comes, they immediately pay the entire balance and come out smelling like a rose with $200 to the good. Credit is also needed in certain circumstances for establishing clout. You can’t call in a telephone order unless you can charge the purchase to your credit card. This delays you getting items you want now.
In fact - some companies will try and make you feel 'low class' if you don’t own a credit card. I am proud to say that I DON’T OWN one. When I’m in a store and they say 'Would you like to put this on your charge?' I promptly say, 'No, I pay for everything I buy!' They immediately shut up. And if they would snap back with a rude answer, I’d leave the stuff sitting on the counter, walk out of the store and get what I needed somewhere else. You don’t have to take abuse just because you don’t choose to line the pockets of the rich credit card companies! It’s insane!
If you’ve ever had a credit card and charged $200, you know you end up paying back $400 or more (unless you pay the balance within 30 days.) Stop allowing these so called banks to rip you off.
from:www.contentmart.com
They arrive in your mail - a conspicuous looking mail piece from some 'official looking' bank claiming that you have been Pre-Approved for a Mastercard or VISA credit card.
Of course, you don’t have to have any credit. You can even have bad credit or have just filed bankruptcy or even be rated as a 'slow payer.' It doesn’t matter because these companies want to give you a second chance! These companies want to make it easy for you to obtain a credit card because they only want your money!
How the thing works is that you must send $35 to receive an application that provides you with a name and address listing of banks willing to give you a VISA and/or Mastercard without any credit approval. That’s a stiff price to pay for a sheet of paper, don’t you think? The instructions that come with the application will let you know how the scheme works. You must open up a bank account with the bank once that bank approves you. Big deal! They make it appear that you have won some contest or something and people will feel 'good inside' that someone has approved them.
But that’s not all. The minimum amount you must deposit is $200 but you can deposit as much as you want. In return, you get a Mastercard or VISA credit card with a credit limit up to the amount you deposit. Wow! What a great honor! This is no break! Think about it. If a stranger gave you $200 to hold for him until Friday wouldn’t you feel safe in granting them a $200 loan? I mean - it’s their own money you’ve got. If they default, you’ve got the full amount to pay off the loan. It takes a twisted mind to take $200 from you, grant you $200 credit with your own money plus charge you astronomical interest rates just to take the money from your hand and give it back to you. That’s insane!
Of course - to combat this insanity, the great and wonderful banks claim to help fix your credit report. They say that if you maintain payments in a correct fashion, this information will be reported to the credit bureau. Yea, right! When Shell calls the credit bureau to check your credit for a gas credit card, your report shows 47 defaulted loans and a bankruptcy. However, there is one company that you make payments to on-time. Big deal. Don’t you think the rest of your bad credit will still be the deciding factor in Shell’s final decision. You bet you bottom dollar!
Look at this: the bank makes money from the interest of your deposit. The bank also makes money by charging you 18% to 22% interest for the right to use their Mastercard or VISA. Plus the bank is guaranteed their money because if you don’t pay on time, they take the money out of the bank account you opened with them along with any interest you have accumulated.
Why would anyone with $200 to deposit want a credit card with a $200 limit? If you have $200 and want to buy an item for $200 - go out and purchase it. That way, you’ll own it lock, stock and barrel. No interest, no payments, no hassle! Plus, you won’t owe your soul to the company store - sort-of-speak.
Credit is a wonderful thing if you use it intelligently. I know people who charge $100 at the beginning of the month and use that $100 to make $300. It’s free money for 30 days. Then, when the bill comes, they immediately pay the entire balance and come out smelling like a rose with $200 to the good. Credit is also needed in certain circumstances for establishing clout. You can’t call in a telephone order unless you can charge the purchase to your credit card. This delays you getting items you want now.
In fact - some companies will try and make you feel 'low class' if you don’t own a credit card. I am proud to say that I DON’T OWN one. When I’m in a store and they say 'Would you like to put this on your charge?' I promptly say, 'No, I pay for everything I buy!' They immediately shut up. And if they would snap back with a rude answer, I’d leave the stuff sitting on the counter, walk out of the store and get what I needed somewhere else. You don’t have to take abuse just because you don’t choose to line the pockets of the rich credit card companies! It’s insane!
If you’ve ever had a credit card and charged $200, you know you end up paying back $400 or more (unless you pay the balance within 30 days.) Stop allowing these so called banks to rip you off.
from:www.contentmart.com
10 Simple Rules to Make You Serious Money in the Sharemarket
It appears that I have a dislike for admitting that I could ever get it wrong and this explains why I sometimes can't take a loss. On the other side of the equation: if I was wrong and XYZ was not going to make me a fortune - then what could I do? Okay I spotted one of my stocks in the "Shares" magazine - I confess! I was just reading about all the up-and-coming stars and there was this little snippet asking a question like: "Could this be a new Microsoft?". Now they may not have said that exactly, but it was enough to make me think XYZ was a good news story as its price will testify - at the time(in the 70's ). I mean it was there - it had to have some merit!It was a miner and had a technology company in its portfolio and a percentage of another tech company and was doing very little in the resources area because there was more hype in tech shares at the time. It was a time when many miners were turning into tech companies. Can you visualize the miners making their way to the goldfields?Well I was right into that - so I bought heaps and the crazy part was that I was not going to sell something that had such a great future. Nearly $60 000 went into this company and I've still got it. Not because I am still in love, but because it's nearly worthless. It will be a reminder to me never to do that again!How much is this RULE really worth to me? That's simple - without counting any other stock in my tech-wrecked portfolio, this RULE is worth $59 494.45 saved.If I just add one more, an online retailer, which cost me $69 928.20, my total saving would be $129 422.65. So if someone had given me the above rule to live by, I could have sold out early and kept most of $129 000.The unloved by the market, which included many of my startups have plummeted since the tech boom - some went up like shooting starts, only to be blasted to pieces and fall back to Earth. You won't get directors coming out to say that the market has put an outrageous price on this company or that one, and that really, there is no substance to back up the price. However someone will notice that the king is really naked and when they do there is no mercy from the crowd.I have heard say, "The market is always right", and maybe it's not a bad one to remember. Those that didn't participate in the tech boom will have lost considerable money and those that fell in love with the naked royalty will have lost their shirts.Does it hurt? You bet it does! It hurts every day, but it will get better one day - I hope! It was a great experience, even though it was a painful one. Now it is you, the reader, who stands to benefit from my mistakes; which increases the value of such insights and will make this book probably the most treasured book about the market's affect on individuals' psychology and an awesome reminder of the pitfalls of sharemarket speculation. Do I think that I'm the worst case? NO WAY!! You only have to look back in time to see what companies, underwriters and well-established financial houses paid for software companies and internet security companies - even our beloved Telstra(using the taxpayer's wealth) suffered its billion dollar nightmares, not to mention News Corp's businesses going bust. The bigger they are the harder they have fallen: Enron, Vivendi, Worldcom and others handing over billions as if there was no tomorrow. Well now the penny has well and truly dropped as these huge gorillas fight for their survival under a pile of debt and scandal. Nope...I'm in good company. The scandals and falls since June 2002 have certainly been enough to scare me. We live in hope that we don't end up with a depression and that the losses of up to $US8 trillion at the time of writing, are finally stemmed without bringing the whole financial system to its knees.How many lucky devils bought News Corp at $26 and how many have watched the decent to $8.46? Losing $12 billion in one year only makes people want to own it, pushing the price from below $9.50 back up to above $10.50. The market lurches from drunken stupor to bottomless pit of despair - it's easy to get it wrong on any day!In sharemarket trading you live and die by your trading plan - so experiment by all means but at some stage you will need trading rules to live by. The market can leave you behind. It has a way of changing faster than you can. It does its time as a bull and then becomes a bear and in the same breath will do an about face and scream to a high, leaving your position in the red, when everything you know tells you that the market for that stock should not behave that way. You keep screaming ...BUT IT'S A LOSER!!!!!! Stock punters just ignore you, pushing the dog of a stock higher, after losses counted in billions of Australian dollars and a weaker quarterly profit. Who really cares? Emotion carries the market higher until once again the profit takers come in and sell the highs.If you have enjoyed this discussion...there's more....and the content is not specific to any one country. You can apply these ideas.Please visit: http://www.tutorhelp.com.au/sharemarket.html
Get interactive with our Ezine "Request": 10simplerules@tutorhelp.com.au
Happy Investing,
Joseph SgroThe Author
Get interactive with our Ezine "Request": 10simplerules@tutorhelp.com.au
Happy Investing,
Joseph SgroThe Author
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