Ask Creditnet: Is My Credit Card Reporting Correctly?
September 30th, 2010
Dear Creditnet: I’m a cosigner on my son’s credit card. I know, that may have been a mistake in the first place.
Recently, I pulled my credit report and found out that the account was maxed out, closed in March of last year, and then reported late for six months before he started making payments again. The account status is currently listed as “Pays As Agreed.” More »
Posted By: Joshua Heckathorn | Comments (0)Card Issuers Don’t Care What Credit Limit You “Need”
September 22nd, 2010
Credit issuers have become quite stingy when offering new credit card limits. But who can really blame them? With unemployment high and the economy still sputtering along, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that credit issuers want to do everything possible to reduce unnecessary risk.
Likewise, consumers are trying to reduce their own risk by paying down credit card debt and saving more cash. According to the latest report from the Federal Reserve Bank, revolving credit decreased nearly $900 million between June and July of this year. That marks a total annual decline of 1.8 percent and suggests that Americans are truly serious about not only curbing spending but also managing their existing debt. More »
Posted By: Elisabeth Chan | Comments (1)Yet Another FICO Credit-Scoring Myth
September 17th, 2010
Have you heard about how you can unlock your car by having someone transmit a signal from a spare remote key via your cell phone? Pretty cool, huh? Well, it doesn’t work.
Keyless remotes and cell phones operate on completely different frequencies, so don’t plan on this trick ever saving the day the next time you lock your keys in the trunk.
Regardless, I’ve heard this urban myth so many times over the past few months I even started to believe it might work. That is, until I saw it busted with my own eyes on perhaps the greatest show known to mankind—Mythbusters. Seriously, I can’t get enough of the Discovery Channel. More »
Posted By: Joshua Heckathorn | Comments (0)Ask Creditnet: Must My Son Relinquish His Credit Card?
September 8th, 2010
Dear Creditnet: My son has had his own credit card since his 18th birthday. He is a now a 20-year-old college student, has never carried a balance, and uses his credit sparingly. We taught him well.
Under the new credit card laws, will he be required to relinquish his credit card because he will not be 21 until 2011?
Answer: It’s always nice to find a parent that actually understands the value in teaching their children how to responsibly manage credit from a young age. Unfortunately, parents like you are few and far between. Believe me, your son has an enormous head start on most of his college-age peers. More »
Posted By: Joshua Heckathorn | Comments (0)MasterCard’s inControl: Would You Use it?
September 3rd, 2010
These are strange economic times we live in. I’ve heard others refer to it as the “new abnormal”, alluding to the fact that their guess about where our economy’s headed is basically as good as anyone’s. And I have to agree—nothing seems to make sense anymore.
People are walking away from their homes yet still vacationing and buying up the latest expensive Apple gadgets. Unemployment continues to hover around ten percent, yet I can’t ever find a parking spot at the local mall. And the stock market…well, it’s all over the place. Absolutely nuts!
Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, may have said it best when he declared in July that our economic outlook is “unusually uncertain.” Way to go out on a limb there Mr. Bernanke. I don’t know about you, but I’ve felt unusually uncertain for almost two years now. More »
Posted By: Joshua Heckathorn | Comments (1)
