April is Financial Literacy Month. It’s time to step up and make sure you know your personal finance basics. If you have kids, whether first graders or teenagers, it’s also a great time to help educate them about healthy money habits.
This month was originally created by The Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, and has since officially designated in a resolution by the United States Senate and by presidential proclamation.
The month is celebrated by a host of government agencies and private companies with a stake in helping us get smart, money-wise.
You can further your personal finance know-how by reading my weekly roundup of favorite blog posts!
1. Dinks Finance lists how we can think like a bank in order to make sure that we always have money in the bank.
2. How does a $500 annual fee sound? Ask Mr.
Read more…
A wise man once told me “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Or maybe that’s just a popular saying? In any event, unforeseen situations can spring up at any moment, and sometimes they force you to reach for your credit card at the least opportune times.
While it’s impossible to predict emergency situations before they happen, at the very least you can arm yourself with knowledge of the pros and cons of using your credit card to charge your way out of life’s little mishaps.
Here’s a run-down of a common sticky situation, and how credit cards can and cannot help.
Let’s say you’re driving merrily down the highway, not a care in the world until all of the sudden your engine starts to sound like a dying rhinoceros. You shut off your car just as black smoke begins to billow out your front end, and by that point you’ve put two and two together and determined there is something amiss in your car’s engine.
Unless you want to continue your car trip sans car, you’ll have to shell out some pretty pennies to get your car back in working order. Unfortunately, you’re not sitting on a pile of emergency cash that can afford an engine replacement on the spot.
The question now becomes, should you use one of your credit cards?
Of course, you may not have much of a choice. But there are some very important factors that you should consider before breaking out the plastic.
For one, you need to take into account what your spending limit is. If the expense is going to ta
Read more…
I’m going to guess that I’m not alone when I feel that taxes are unfair. I’m young and need the money. I stimulate the economy with my spending! I’ll never get the Social Security I’m paying, so let me keep some tax money.
Then I stop and think about it. My taxes provide me with my local libraries, from which I borrow audiobooks for free. They pay for the police force and firefighters who keep our society orderly and safe. They keep the postal system running, as inefficient as it may be sometimes. They pay for our teachers and schools, and our city animal shelter. As much as I want to complain about paying my taxes (and accountant), it’s really not that bad. We pay far lower individual taxes in the United States than in Europe. Heck, we can even file our taxes online and pay it with our credit cards!
I was interested to read on MSNBC that more than half of Americans — 54 percent — think their taxes are either fair or very fair in an Associated Press-GfK poll.
Read more…
The Federal Reserve Clarifies Rules to Project Credit Card Consumers 
The Fed recently clarified its rules regarding credit card company promotional or “teaser” rates, requiring that card companies cannot increase a cardholder’s promotional interest rate unless and until the customer is at least 60 days delinquent on their payments.
These promo rates are used primarily as a marketing ploy to entice people to sign up for a credit card, and the deals offered can be really good for the consumer. But if the rate gets changed unexpectedly – before the promised expiration date – then the cardholder loses out on the benefit of the low intro rate.
Under the clarified rule, a card company that offers to waive interest charges for six months, for instance, would be prohibited from charging interest unless the account becomes more than 60 days delinquent. Similarly
Read more…
Do you read your credit card bill when you receive it? You should review it for several reasons: to verify transactions and payments; pay attention to the date due, amount due and minimum payment; look for fees and penalties; and note credit line/ limit and credit available.
Transactions and payments
Verify the transactions on your bill including items charged by matching them to your receipts or at least review the list for anything you don’t recognize. Whatever you can’t verify, contact the credit cardpany to get more information to determine if you need to dispute it. Confirm the payment on the statement with the amount you sent either by check or online bill pay.
Due date, amount due and minimum payment – Hint…the due date is not a suggestion.
Make sure to allow enough time for your payments to be received, processed and clear the bank. If you are
Read more…
They said it couldn’t be done, but it has: Two blog posts in two blog carnivals — in one week.
This week, two of my recent blog posts made it into two separate carnivals, establishing what surely must be some sort of Internet record. Yeah, that’s right Rebecca Black: You’re not the only online phenomenon.
My blog post about the Epsilon data breach, “Consumers, bank customers on alert following major email theft,” made it into the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted this week by Blogging For Change. Meanwhile, my blog post about an Experian credit reporting foul-up titled “April Fool’s Day blunder temporarily damages borrowers’ credit” was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival, hosted by Thousandaire. Those carnivals collected lots of great personal finance posts from across the web, and like a recording artist winning their first Grammy, I’ll say that I’m humbled to be included alongside them.
Those blog carnival inclusions have already made for an exciting week, and it’s only Monday. Read more…
— Sharon Williams @ 2:52 am — 
April 21, 2011