A Personal finance blog to get rich
You must be getting periodical mail offers to earn $100, $200 or $300 by applying for credit cards? Sometimes they may have even appeared on your Facebook wall or instagram or in your email box
If you were like me, you’d been putting them in trash. But they are not spam or phishing attempts. These are offers from genuine banks.
Credit cards offer convenience and security to consumers, especially those who don’t want to carry a lot of cash around. A typical consumer in the US is not usually satisfied with having just one credit card. In fact, a 2018 Experian report says that Americans tend to have an average of 3 credit cards.
In fact, I currently have 10+ active credit cards, Signing up for credit cards for rewards and churning them is my hobby. I like reward travel. I travel at a nominal cost. Even after applying and canceling cards frequently, I have an 800+ credit score.
One of the perks of owning credit cards is the ability to earn more cash or points through card referrals. We will talk about the chase card referral today. I’ll share my referrals and encourage you to share your referrals through comments so that each of our readers takes advantage of this opportunity. As my reader, you’ll earn some money on the side.
Earlier we talked about credit card rewards and travel hacking, where you can travel for free with accumulated miles and points on your credit cards. Referrals are an additional way to accumulate more points.
In the last post, I touched upon the idea of credit card rewards and sign-up bonuses. Now I am going to expand it a bit and share my experience with you. For those who’re joining late, this is about travel hacking to get (almost) free airfare and hotel stays, multiple times a year. Let’s embark on the journey now.
I was near 100% credit card user for the last 10 years. I used to pay only mortgage and utility bills using my bank accounts. For everything else, I used credit cards. As a result, I earned a lot of credit card rewards and cash backs.
This is the first of a series of posts I am going to write on credit cards and travel hacking. I started with this hobby recently and I want my readers to get benefited by what I have learned so far. If travel is your thing and you can use credit cards with ease, this series is just for you!
Often we, personal finance bloggers, ask our readers to limit credit card usage. That’s only applicable for people who have had a bad history is handling credit cards. Typically if you are a person who likes to carry credit card balance month to month you shouldn’t use a credit card at all. financially it makes no sense!
Credit card scam is a pretty broad-ranging term that encompasses theft as well as fraud which are committed by credit or any other payment mechanism that is similar to it. You will learn many tips to prevent credit card fraud and scams here.
If a card is used to obtain goods without the intent to pay for it or to obtain illegal funds from another account, then that is a credit card related scam.
This weekend I was doing some de-cluttering exercise at home. Many unwanted papers I got rid of. While doing so, I came across a handwritten note at the back of my old bank statement, probably it was the first bank statement I received after opening an account with Bank Of America. The title said “A Complete Guide to credit score”.
I came to America in August 2005, I belonged to a country where there is no system for maintaining credit scores. There, Lenders, and probably government too, believe in the fact that money can be reclaimed by force.
Anyways, that’s another story, which I will touch upon a bit in various upcoming blog posts. Today’s topic is about that handwritten note.
This post is towards Canadian readers. All of us want to improve our credit scores to borrow money at a lower interest rate when we buy a home, refinance the home or buy our cars. One way to improve the score is by having credit cards and using them well. But to have a credit card you need to have a good credit score. It’s a vicious cycle, how to get approved for a credit card with bad credit?
Each financial decision you make has an impact on your credit score. In general, your credit score is a reflection of how well or how poor you manage your finances. In recent times I applied for 3 different credit cards, total 4 in this year alone. I got approved for all of them. I apply for cards in a bunch of 3-4 every 6 months. This ensures I get sign-up rewards and bonus constantly, they are free money.
Credit card debt is the worst type of debt. People fail to pay off credit card debt. Most of the time the debt relates to retail purchases that do not retain resale value, which is why the debt is so hard to shift, and why it builds up so fast. Credit cards usually have higher rates of interest than almost any other kind of money lend – this is another reason the amount you owe seems to rise almost faster than you can pay it back.
Today on my way back from work, on NPR radio I heard about declining credit card delinquency rate in the US, in fact, delinquency is at 7 years low right now. That was very good news for us. and a sign of recovering the economy but if you see deeper, the problem is still intact. Problem with paying only paying the minimum due amount every month.
Steve recently lost his job at a sporting goods manufacturing company, he has 3 credit cards each with high balances. He now lives on the emergency fund (What exactly is an emergency fund)and a little help from his wife’s income as a playschool teacher. They have two children age 10 and 6.
Because of a combined debt of $25K he has to pay $500 per month to keep his credit card active and credit score in-tact. But, he obviously can’t afford to make that payment every month. He has the below options in front of him
But it is not the best option available for you, a simple effort can bail you out of the situation, your card issuer deals with cases like Steve’s 1000 times a day. Instead of looking help elsewhere, try looking into the card companies itself for help.
