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Best Credit Card Sign-Up Bonuses for Summer Travel

One of the best ways to make this years summer vacation easier on the bank account is to take advantage of some lucrative credit card sign-up bonuses. By simply signing up for a new credit card and meeting a reasonable spending threshold within the first few months, consumers with good credit scores could rack up more than $500 in free travel awards to use this summer!

Not sure where to start searching?

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Tags: Credit Card, Summer

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Credit Scores and Fannie Mae–What You Need to Know

Here are three facts about mortgage applications that at first glance are difficult to reconcile:

Fact 1: Mortgage rates are at historic lows.

Fact 2: Real Estate prices have fallen substantially over the past few years.

Fact 3: The number of mortgage applications over the past 2 months are DOWN.

So whats going on here? Well, according to the WSJ, part of the problem is persistent unemployment. Rates and prices can be low, but if you are looking for work, you wont be buying a home or refinancing a mortgage.

But there is a second problem that has persisted for several yearslow credit scores. According to Fair Isaac, the creator of the FICO credit score, more than 25 percent of consumers who have active credit files (about 43 million people) have FICO scores of 599 and below. Heres a chart from FICO Banking Analytics Blog showing the shift over time:

And for most mortgages, a score of 599 wont qualify you for a mortgage.

Now, weve already covered what credit score you need to get a mortgage.

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Hold cash: returns are better than you think

Cash: safer than you might think

If you look at any historical analysis of stockmarket returns, one thing stands out pretty clearly: over most periods, holding equities serves you much better than holding cash. Take the gold standard of equity return analysis, the Barclays Equity Gilt Study, and you will see that since 1899 equities have returned 4.9% a year on average in real terms (over inflation), while cash has returned a mere 0.9%. Then look at the conventional wisdom as quoted by Pete Comley in his new book, Monkey with a Pin.

According to the Motley Fool website, “over periods of five years the returns from shares have historically beaten cash around 80% of the time; over ten years that rises to about 90%; and for 20-year periods it’s 98%”. Look at numbers like that and it is no wonder that so many of us feel so tense about keeping money in cash.

But what if the case against cash it not quite what it seems? Comle

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Tags: Think

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Addiction to Gambling: Getting Out of Debt

Gambling debt is not only a pecuniary responsibility; it is also an early sign of an addiction to gambling. There are a handful means to get by the financial problem of gambling debt, yet you may want to look into your gambling lifestyle to steer clear of a further upsurge on debt as well.

1. Speak with the casinos where you gamble to learn about how much you exactly owe them. Such circumstances also deem accounting for whatever loans you put your name down for to fund your gambling.

2. Create a list of supplementary resources of funding that you utilized to compensate for gambling. A number of gamblers obtain money out of family savings accounts and college funds. You will want to strive to return the money into such funds past the repayment to loan companies and casinos.

3. Establish a payment timetable in order to cope with paying off gambling establishments. Interest rates differ from casino to casino, but you can perhaps try to reach a deal for lower rates if you concur to pay higher sums.

4. Become a member of a gambling support group.

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Tags: Debt

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CARD Act Protections Against Interest Rate Increases

The Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights is a piece of legislation that when passed, became known as the CARD Act of 2009. Although this law regulates many different aspects of the credit card industry, its most popular provisions are the ones that protect consumers against arbitrary rate increases.

Fixed Versus Variable Rates

Prior to the CARD Act, one of the key issues that consumers had with credit card offers was that they could borrow money at one rate, and then be forced to pay it back at a higher rate. Some banks even went so far as to market their rates as fixed, when in reality, they were anything but. Cardholders could re-price their interest rates at any time and for any reason. Thanks to the CARD Act, this is no longer the permitted. Consumers must be offered a rate that is either called “fixed” or “variable”. Under the new law, banks that offer fixed rates cannot increase customer’s APR unless the following conditions are met; The account has to be at least 12 months old a 45 day advance notice of the rate hike is given, and the customer has the opportunity to opt-out of the new rate. Cardholde

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Tags: Act, Card Act

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