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Some credit cards require good credit. These cards offer better interest rates and terms for the consumer. But you may not be sure that you qualify for them. How do you know?

The first thing to do is be aware of your general credit history. You should have a general feel for this anyhow. Details such as how often you’ve been late or missed a payment, and other such problems you are probably aware of. If you’ve had a lot of these issues in recent years, your credit may not be up to a good credit standard.

You should also look at how much debt you are carrying relative to your income. If this is out of balance, you will be seen as a greater credit risk, and so your score will be lower.

But it’s always a good idea to know more about your credit. You can get your credit report free from each of the credit bureaus annually, and you should consider taking advantage of this regularly.

There are of course other factors, such as how far back your credit history goes, how often you apply for new credit and other issues.

In general, a score of at least 650 is good. The trick is that the credit bureaus may not always show you your score when you get your free report. This is why you have to have a feel for what it all means before you apply.

Technorati Tags: good credit, credit cards for good credit, good credit score

College is expensive. There’s no way around that. Most families cannot afford to pay for a college education outright. And this means a serious limitation on which college you can attend, working your way through, or finding a way to get the money together.

I worked my way through. Looking back, I should have gone ahead and applied for loans, as this meant I took extra years to graduate just because I had to cope with a work schedule. Getting something like a federal stafford student loan probably would have been a smart idea.

Today there are a lot of ways to research how you can pay for college. The Internet wasn’t widely available when I started college. That really made researching information a lot more difficult. These days the resources to learn about the stafford college loan, as well as other loans and grants is much easier to find.

It’s hard deciding to take on debt for your education. You have to decide how much debt is worth it to you. Graduating with $50,000 worth of college debts is not a fun way to graduate. You’re probably better off finding grants if those are the expenses you’re looking at, or a more affordable college. But only you can analyze how much debt your education requires.

Working through college is not a bad thing, but if you have to work too many hours you are limiting how quickly you can get done with it and on to the kind of work you really want to do. Think carefully about your needs in terms of your long term success.

Most people have more than one credit card. There’s the main one they use, a spare or two (three? four?) and perhaps some store credit cards. All that really adds up.

The trouble with having a lot of credit cards is that you have to keep track of them. If you have several, that’s not easy. And making mistakes such as missing payments or making them late is what messes up your credit report.

The key is to use as few as possible. Think about why you have each credit card. If you have many, it may be time to pay off and close out the excess accounts, or at least quit carrying the card in your wallet. Put it someplace safe at home.

But how do you decide which to keep? There are a few factors to consider.

1. What’s the APR? Especially if you’re carrying a balance, you want to keep using the relatively cheap cards.
2. Which cards have annual or monthly fees? If you have others without fees, you can probably get away with canceling the ones that cost you extra. They need to be pretty exceptional to be worth paying for beyond what the APR costs.
3. Do you really need those store credit cards? Sure, you probably got a nice discount the day you applied for the card, but what has it done for you lately? Most store credit cards charge a rather high interest rate.
4. Do you even use the card?

Depending on your credit history and what you have now on credit cards, it can sometimes be worth your while to pick a better card to apply for, then quit using your old ones. Don’t cancel all your old cards, as how long an accound has been open makes a difference to your history. But if you think you can now get a low rate credit card or 0%APR for a time, why not save the money?

Any cards you want to keep open but not use, find a safe place in your home to keep them. With important papers is one idea. You don’t want to be carrying cards you won’t use. In case your wallet is lost or stolen, they would just be more cards to report. Carry only what you need.

Technorati Tags: too many credit cards, choosing credit cards, apr

It must be an interesting time to have a mortgage. Listening to the news I’ve heard that foreclosures are up, and that’s scary for anyone who is struggling with their mortgage.

Yet I’d love to have a mortgage. Just to know that my money is going somewhere other than into the pit that is rent. It sounds nice.

Most important is that you get good mortgage advice. A big part of why there are so many foreclosures going on is that so many people have been getting bad mortgage advice. Taking on too big a mortgage, paying interest only and then being unable to cope when that ends… these are some of the more common mistakes people made because lenders told them they could do it.

Interest only mortgages can be interesting, but you need to know what you’re doing with it. I know some people feel that it’s simply unethical for banks to push them so hard because too many people don’t use them correctly. It’s not a good option for every situation.

I think the key to these is to look at where you plan on being at the end of the mortgage. If you’re hoping a jump in income will allow you to switch to a more traditional mortgage, you may be going interest only for the wrong reason. You need to know what you’re doing at the end, not just what you hope to do.

Get educated before you take on a mortgage. Don’t just rely on what lenders tell you; too many just want your business, not what will help you the most.The Truth About Mortgage.com website offers some good tips to help you make it happen.

It’s tough figuring out the best way to teach a teen about handling debt, especially credit cards. There are a lot of risks for them, and they can make a mess of their credit history before they understand its importance at all.

Some parents add their teen to their credit card so that they can keep an eye on how the card is used. They can easily see on their own statement exactly what the teen did.

The trouble is that it means the teen has your credit limit. If they go wild, you are absolutely responsible.

Of course, many teens are trustworthy, and you might not have any problems with their spending habits at all. But even so, why tie them to your credit history when they’re at a great time to start establishing their own?

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear. You should never give any kind of a credit card to a teen who isn’t ready to use one wisely. Start them out with lessons on what it means to have a credit card and how you want them to use it.

Consider starting them with a debit card. Just be sure of what happens when it runs out of money.

When you go for the credit card, you should be able to get your teen a student credit card if they are in school. This can have just their name on it, rather than relying upon your credit, allowing them to have full responsibility.

You may need to help them remember at first to keep up on the payments, and you should do everything you can to keep them paying it off rather than making minimum payments. Also try to keep their limit to a lower level, even if you have to have your teen call and ask for it. You don’t want to let your teen get too deeply in debt at so young an age.

But try to keep it mostly your teen’s responsibility. Go over the statement regularly, and make him or her pay the balance. You need to make the money real, not just bucks from Mom and Dad. Your teen can get a job to cover it. All a part of real life they really need to understand.

Getting your teen a student credit card makes a lot more sense than adding him or her to your own card. The teen years are an ideal time to learn responsibility. Don’t make it so easy that no lesson is learned.

Technorati Tags: student credit card, credit cards for teens

Airline miles are a great reward for frequent travelers. You can get bonus points just for signing up. Best of all, you can get points not only for the miles traveled, but for the money you spend on your entire trip. It’s a chance to double up on what you get.

Often enough, your points through your credit card are completely separate from any you get from the airline. It is possible that you will get a card sponsored by the airline, and therefore have it all in one account, however. This is nice if you pretty much use that one airline to the exclusion of others, but more limiting if you would like a choice of airlines.

The first thing you need to watch out for are the fees. There’s no point in paying high annual fees if they mean the card is costing you more than you would get back in free travel.

A big advantage comes if the card gives you bonus points for purchases at a variety of partners. If you stay at a particular chain of hotels when you travel, you may get more for your dollars spent there with the right plan. These are things to check out as you choose an airline miles points card.

Technorati Tags: credit card, airline miles, points, rewards

One of the beautiful things about balance transfers is that they give you the chance to take advantage of 0% APR offers for a time, sometimes even for more than a year. If you have other credit card debt, this can save you quite a bit of money.

However, there can be a challenge to this if you are already carrying a large amount of debt. This can have a negative impact on your credit rating, and that means you may not be eligible for the best offers.

During the 0% APR time, you need to pay your debts down as fast as possible. If you can keep from adding any non-0% APR transactions to the card, so much the better. Whatever you do, make more than the minimum payments. This way, if you cannot pay it all off by the end you will still have paid off a good amount. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the big things that happens when you get married is that you start thinking about joining all your accounts. You’re one family now, right? It just seems wrong to many people to keep separate accounts.

But that is not necessarily the best of ideas.

It can work, and work well in many situations. But it is not right for every situation. And you shouldn’t even be taking into consideration whether or not you think your relationship will last forever. You probably wouldn’t have gotten married if you weren’t thinking forever. But you should always consider the what-ifs.

Like what if one of you dies? Will the other still have a credit history to fall back upon, or just joint accounts? Make sure there are some individual accounts, just for safety. Both parties do need to have some credit history in just their own name.

You will also want to consider what will happen to each person’s credit score if you do join everything up. Suddenly all the mistakes of one relate to both. If you’re about equal, this isn’t too bad a thing, but if one is significantly lower it can make more sense to keep the accounts separate. This way you can use that account to apply for the things that really need a lower APR, such as when you buy a car.

Being married often impacts both credit accounts anyhow. You probably will have joint banking, and if your family is struggling to pay the bills, that’s going to show when you pay your debts, or more precisely, when you find you can’t. Do your best to manage all accounts well and fairly for both parties.

Technorati Tags: joint accounts, credit, debt

There aren’t many people who can get a car without getting a loan. It’s a big chunk of money to get even a small car, especially if you’re buying new. This means that being ready for your car loan application is important.

Of course, dealerships are always happy to talk loan. It’s a big part of their business. But you may not get the best deal by going through the dealership. Just as with any other loan, it really pays to shop around for your car loan.

One of the big questions is new car or used car. This will greatly impact your loan’s APR, as generally new car loans get better rates.

But even before you shop around for a loan too much, you should have some idea as to your credit score. If your credit is in poor shape, you can assume that you will have to pay higher rates than if you have good credit. But if you don’t know how your credit is doing, you ought to try to find out. Can’t hurt anything, right? Especially since you’re entitled to get it free annually.

It can pay to know what the dealership has to offer, of course. No doubt you have seen plenty of commercials offering low rates for top tier customers. This can be wonderful if you’re in that tier, but no promises are made for those who don’t qualify. You may well be best off getting your loan elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

The only bad things about credit cards is that they mean debt and they cost you money. Depending on your interest rate this can be a lot of money. But if you qualify you can pay a lot less than you may be paying right now.

Once you have started to build up a credit history, you really need to look at what you are getting from your current cards. If the rates are high it’s time to reassess what you are getting.

The simplest way to get a low rate on your credit card may well be to call and ask for one. If you’re getting credit card offers in the mail already, use them for comparison of what you could be getting. And if the first person you talk to says they can’t lower your rate, ask for a supervisor. Persistence can pay off big time.

But sometimes you want a new card for one reason or another. Maybe the current credit card issuer you are with is not pleasing you. You need to know which card you are most likely to be approved for at a low rate.

Start out by getting your credit report. You can do this free once every year from each of the big three credit bureaus. Look it over for any problems. Clear them up before applying for anything – this will improve your odds of being accepted with a low APR.

Choose the card you want to apply for carefully. Some low rate credit Read the rest of this entry »