Credit Education

They’ve been called the crack cocaine of the credit card industry, the conveniencecheck. These checks are often included as statement stuffers to your credit card bills but they do come as stand alone mailers as well. These checks are designed to entice credit card customers to either take cash advances or pay off other credit card debt […]

The question of credit damages is one that expert witnesses struggle with on a dailybasis. And, the question about “does denial equal damage” is simply one of the cornerstone issues that credit experts face when doing expert witness related work.  Does the denial of something as trivial as a credit card account mean you’ve sufferedcredit

One of the realities of the world of consumer credit is that it’s not without humor. Andone of the most misunderstood aspects of credit reporting is what constitutes a latepayment, and what doesn’t. A 30 day late payment has actually been interpreted by some as being 1 to 30 days pastthe due date. That’s an

Nothing bothers me more than to hear people say they “love” their debit cards. It’sasinine to me for people to be connected so emotionally to any financial service orproduct. It sets them up for disappointment and places unrealistic expectations on thefuture behavior of your banking partners. How do I know this? Just look at how

When it comes to managing that little slice of plastic in your pocket, it’s not as simple asjust writing a check every now and then. There are strategic ways to best manage creditcards, and the reward is great credit and little to no fees or interest. Now that we’vepassed the 2011 holiday season, paying off

It’s one of the more obscure FICO scoring myths floating around the Internet. Doeschoosing to opt out of preapproved credit card offers improve your credit scores, or not?And if not, then why not? First things first, what’s “opting out?” Opting out, which can be done for free atwww.optoutprescreen.com, removes your name from any list sold

The day after Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the busiest shopping season of theyear, Black Friday through year’s end. Many consumers will spend more at retailersbetween Black Friday and the end of the year than they spent during the previous 47weeks. The retailers will see us coming and they’re armed with “20% off” offers if

According to a survey released in October 2011 by CreditCards.com the average creditcard interest rate is now close to 15 percent. This is up roughly 1 full percentage pointfrom the average interest rate on new credit card accounts from the same period inOctober 2011. The question is, why are interest rates continuing to increase on

Section 604 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows employers to pull credit reports forthe purposes of pre-employment and continued employment screening. The practice,while widely criticized by consumer advocates, is still very popular with some 60 percentof employers either pulling credit reports for all of their applicants or at least some ofthem, this according to