Your Credit Cards Guide

In 2011, there were monumental happenings across the globe: the uprisings across the Arab world, the ending of the war in Iraq, and the death of Steve Jobs, just to name a few. But in the credit card industry, it was mostly business as usual: the card companies searched for revenue streams, the cardholders stressed about paying their balances, and the economy continued to struggle.

However, as we look ahead to 2012, there may be a few events and trends which will have an impact on the way we use credit cards. So here are our predictions for the new year:

 1. We’ll start seeing credit cards that are more secure. In 2011, Visa began the transition from the current magnetic-stripe cards to chip-and-PIN cards. The newer cards contain an embedded computer chip which stores sensitive data and can only be accessed when paired with a customer’s PIN number.

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Along with the resolutions many Americans make to lose weight and stop smoking, many Americans are hoping to improve their financial lives as well. According to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling’s (NFCC) December online poll, 62 percent of Americans said their top priority this year is to reduce their debt.

That number is down some from last year’s 69 percent. Only 6 percent of Americans said reducing their dependence on credit cards is their top financial goal for the year. This number is only down 1 percent from last year. Improving their credit scores is also on the minds of Americans asked by the online poll. Twe

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Sound Advice from Jeff York

With loan interest rates at record lows, you might be considering rearranging your debt to help your monthly budget. Lowering the interest cost on your consumer loans means you pay less—right? Well, not always. Consolidating debt can make good sense, but what is good in the short run may actually cost you more in the long run.

Debt Consolidation Options

Consolidating debt is the process of combining several loans into one loan, which should have a lower overall interest rate. This leaves you with only one payment to worry about, as opposed to multiple payments at different interest rates.

Consolidating your debt can have a very beneficial effect on your monthly budget. A number of debt consolidation loan options include:

1. C

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Prepaid credit cards are becoming ever more popular with the Mercator Advisory Group predicting that the amount loaded onto prepaid cards will increase to around $233.8 billion in 2012.

This will mark a fourfold increase in the past three years.

Prepaid cards are very popular at the moment and anyone can be approved for them. This makes them ideal for people with little or no credit history and for those with damaged credit. Prepaid cards can be used anywhere that Visa, MasterCard and American Express are accepted as a form of credit.

The most attractive feature of prepaid cards is that hey allow consumers to avoid building up credit card debt and overdrafts because they only allow a consumer to spend their own money which has already been preloaded onto the card.

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Scam examples

To make the deal legitimate, the criminal tells the buyer to send the payment to a third-party agent via a wire transfer service and fax the receipt to the criminal as proof.  The criminal takes the money and doesn’t deliver the vehicle.

Some scammers use the names of reputable companies to seem legitimate such as eBay Motors vehicle protection program. Th

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Dear Erica, My ex-girlfriend is going to file for bankruptcy. Why do I care, right? Because she shouldnt be able to. First, she used me for money when we were together, and I paid for everything, including her credit card bills that she constantly ran up to the hilt. I took her to nice dinners and cruises, and vacations. She bought clothes and did whatever she wanted. I was good to her, but eventually, even with my good job, I couldn’t afford her. After I stopped paying for everything, she broke up with me and still ran up the cards and now can’t pay for them. She came crying back to me asking for help or shes going to have to go bankrupt. This time I said no. Does she really have the right to tell the banks off like she did me? Dear Mario, Looks to me like you dodged a bullet with that gem! If I were you, I’d stop wasting one more precious second thinking about her, and that includes getting angry about what she does with her finances.

Not going to happen, though, is it? You’r

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