Best Credit Cards for You!

A couple of weeks ago, Robert Brokamp explained how living below your means is like saving for retirement twice. On the surface, his advice was pretty conventional: The more you save today, the more you’ll have tomorrow. This is similar to a point I’ve been repeating for the past five years.

Smart personal finance can be reduced to one simple equation:

If you spend more than you earn, you have a negative cash flow. You’re losing wealth and in danger of going into debt. (Or, if you’re already in debt, you’re digging the hole deeper.) If you spend less than you earn, you have a positive cash flow, which will let you climb out of debt and build wealth.

But as I was editing Brokamp’s article, I had a flash of insight.

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Tags: Saving, Saving Building

The earthquake in Japan scared the crap out of me, and I was simply sitting in the comfort of my home nearly 5,000 miles away.

I would find myself up late at night watching video clips on CNN over and over again thinking, “Did this really just happen?” The footage looked like something straight out of an apocalyptic movie. Really scary stuff!

Of course, my thoughts would eventually turn to all the Japanese people whose lives were lost and how prepared I would be to take care of my own family and friends in the face of such devastation. I do live in Seattle, so earthquakes and even tsunamis are real dangers that shouldn’t be ignored. Sadly, I can’t say I’m prepared at all.

So I’m determined this month to buy 72-hour kits that will always be ready to go in the event of an unplanned evacuation from our home.

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It has been revealed that many consumers are now steering clear of store cards and sticking to credit cards because of the higher rates of interest that are charged on store cards. Many officials have spent years urging consumers to be wary of store cards because of the extortionate rates of interest that are charged compared to some of the best buy credit cards.

It appears that now people are finally starting to take note of these officials, with the difficult financial climate forcing them to look more carefully at how much they are being charged for their credit. Store cards charge a far higher rate of interest than the average credit card interest rate, and they are also more restrictive because they can only be used at certain retailers based on which store card the consumer has.

According to recently released figures the total amount that was spent on store cards last year was around £2 billion.

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Tags: Cards, Steering Clear, Store Cards

Give your tires a visual once-over whenever you fuel up, and once a month use a digital tire gauge to make sure your tires have the pressure level required for your car. You can find pressure level on a sticker in the doorjamb on the driver side or in the owner’s manual. You can improve your fuel economy by up to 3.3% by keeping your tires at the proper pressure, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Although the accepted rule of thumb has been to change oil every 3,000 miles, Edmunds says that’s an outdated rule that wastes oil and money. The average car has an oil change interval of around 7,800 miles, but check your owner’s manual to make sure you aren’t going too long between changes, needlessly having them done too often.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a tune-up can improve a vehicle’s gas mileage by an average of 4%, depending on the type of repair needed and how well it is done.

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Are you confronted with a possible short sale or foreclosure on your home? If so, you may be wondering how long it will take your FICO scores to FULLY recover after one of these bombshells hits your credit reports.

It’s a great question, and it happens to be one that we receive emails about every day. Well, now we have some hard data from FICO that finally helps clear up all the confusion around FICO scores, short sales, and foreclosures.

Check out this chart: Estimated Time for FICO Score to Fully Recover, which was released yesterday on one of FICO’s blogs.

Essentially, what FICO’s telling us is that if you have a good starting score (780), it will take your FICO score about 7 years to fully recover. In addition, there’s absolutely no difference in recovery time among short sales or foreclosures.

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Tags: Short, Short Sales