Do you really want to spend another cent on interest being paid to a credit card company that is basically a legal mafia designed and constructed like a spider web to lure the unsuspecting public masses into its insidious feeding tactics? Do you want to contribute another dime to a faceless and loveless organization whose very survival and illusory existence depends on your continued unhappiness? No. Of course you don’t. That is why the credit card should never be your first choice, but should instead always only be used as a last resort.
The check card is a wonderful alternative to the credit card that has been implemented by most western banks today. It provides the same convenience as a credit card and yet it doesn’t carry any of the implications of interest which incur in a conventional credit card situation. The money is drawn directly from your bank account, and usually only the money you currently have in your account is the credit limit assigned to your card. This way you are protected from spending into a debt situation similar to the kind a traditional credit card company would otherwise be enticing you into.
You can usually use a check card just about anywhere that you can use a credit card and, as an added bonus, you can also use it as a debit card at some stores which allow pin code entry and this will generally ensure that no additional hidden fees will be incurred. Using it as a debit card in this way also ensures that the funds will be immediately transferred, which is a good way to protect from spending beyond your account’s currently capability in case you don’t keep good track of your spending. If used as a credit card, the funds may clear in a few days rather than immediately, so it would be possible to be overdrawn on your account if you aren’t watching your balance and spending accordingly.
You can also usually use a check card as an ATM card which means that you can easily make deposits and withdrawals and so forth from any convenient location. This makes it really easy to spend cash when you prefer to and also makes it easier to avoid overspending, and is obviously important if a shop only accepts cash. ATM’s seem to be just about everywhere now, so it is very convenient to shop in most areas.
There may be some occasions where a conventional credit card still comes in handy. It is certainly a great backup to have in any situation. There are certain businesses which sometimes prefer a credit card for renting items such as vehicles, yet they will usually still rent to check card users. They may, however, request a cash deposit to be held on the account to ensure the safe return of the vehicle and it is a rather easy process. Be sure to plan ahead and have sufficient funds available for a deposit if planning to rent a car on a trip or similar. It is wise to contact the rental agency in advance and ask about their policies on the subject.
Say you have some extra savings now that you have cut back on your expenses and you are trying to cut down on your credit card debt. Which credit card should you pay off first? There is a lot of chatter around the Internet about this. Here are my tips:
First, make sure you don’t miss any monthly payments. The penalty for missing a payment is always the worst so this should be the first thing to do.
Second, in general, pay off the card with the highest APR since this is the card you are paying interest on. This is what you should default to. There may be reasons why you shouldn’t necessarily do this. If you can, it may be best to pay off a card fully that has a small balance on it. This make sense especially if the APR on this card is similar, just slightly less than your card with the highest APR. Also, by having a $0 balance on that card, it may increase your credit score, which would then decrease the APR you would pay on other credit cards. It has been reported that it is beneficial to not have too many cards with balances on them, so if you have a balance on one less card, all the better.’
Another reason for paying off a card with a small balance is the emotional satisfaction of getting rid of one more debt. Keep in mind this is just an emotional feeling though and doesn’t necessarily translate into any more fiscal health!
One thing to keep in mind is to see if a card is about to balloon APR on you. If, for example, you did a 0% interest balance transfer on a card, and in a month, that card’s APR is going to 20%, it’s time to start paying off that card (assuming that card’s soon-to-be APR is higher than your highest APR card). In this case, you are basically paying off your highest APR before it has a chance to bite you!
If you’re someone just fresh out of a job or having trouble making you rent, you might be surprised to hear that making money is not nearly as hard as it seems. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly not easy and requires a lot of hard work, but becoming a millionaire is not this impossible dream that is out of reach of anyone. All you have to do is believe that you can make a million dollars.
Here’s a general outline for how you can make a million dollars pretty easily (by which I mean a few years of working every day, but hey, you thought it was impossible so this is pretty damn easy):
1) Believe you can. You can’t make a mill;ion dollars until you get it through your head that you can do it. If you don’t believe it, even if someone gives you a million dollars, your head will think up reasons why it shouldn’t be yours. Stop that!
Your head is only so big, so if you’re thinking about ways why you can’t make a million dollars, you’re not going to be thinking of ways to make a million dollars, which is what you want. You need to think about stuff in order for it to happen.
2) Look for a need to fill Money doesn’t just come to you straight up, you actually do have to do something to get it. The good news is money comes in an often disguised form - that of other people’s problems. If you can solve someone’s problem and fill their need, then money will pretty much fall into your hands.
This is where part 1) becomes pretty relevant. If you’re the guy complaining about problems and not thinking about ways to fix other people’s, you’re gonna owe people for fixing your crap. Don’t be the whiny guy who can’t get things done. Remember, the person who does it gets paid.
3) Fill the need Once you’ve discovered a need, just shut up and start figuring out how to fix it. It’s easy to be all picky and say why you can’t do it or why it’s not your responsibility. Don’t even think or say that. Just do it. Fix the problem. Once it’s fixed, ask the person the amount they feel that was worth and that they should give you. And take the money with the assurance that you have created value for someone and the world is the better for it.
4) Repeat steps #1-3 until you have a million dollars Not that hard really 
Throughout most of your upbringing, your parents have probably stressed how important it is to save money and to have a budget, so that the money you save can last for the rest of your life. While the logic does make sense, it doesn’t seem to acknowledge that the world is full of abundance. Why would you save money when it’s lying around everywhere? Just spend it and make more! Let’s examine a few irrefutable facts:
Saving money sucks
If you have $1000, the maximum you can save is $1000. Of course, you can’t actually even save all of that, because that $1000 was doing something (otherwise you wouldn’t have been spending it in the first place). Maybe you’ll have to sit in economy class instead of first class when you fly. Or maybe you’ll have to eat $1 grapes instead of $2 grapes Or maybe you can find the $1 grapes that are the same as $2 grapes but you’ll have to spend an extra hour doing it.
Whatever the cut you make, for that money you are saving, you are giving up something of value, be it time, happiness, or something yummy. You spent it for a reason - cause you wanted whatever it can buy. If you’re going to save, that means you have to give something up.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t really like to give things up.
You can make more than you can save
So let’s get back to the $1000 thing. If you got $1000, that’s the absolute maximum you can save - if you chose to give up the activity/thing that you spent it on. Even after all that loss, all you can save is $1000.
Now if we take a look on the making money side, there’s no limit to the amount of money you can make. You make a website and sell it, boom, you’re $1000 richer. You promote your website that has good content, boom, another few thousand. You see someone with good food and not selling it well, another chance to make a ton of money. It’s pretty unlimited and is only bound by your imagination.
So do you want to save that $1000, or figure out how to make whatever amount you want?
It’s not like people haven’t already done it before!
As of 2009, getting a loan from a bank to start a business is almost an impossible task. Even at nearly 0% federal rate, banks are still not making any loans. So if you’re strapped for cash, you might want to turn to preapproved sources such as your credit cards.
A Source Of Cash
The great thing about credit cards is that banks tend not to decrease your credit line, but only increase your interest rates. So whenever possible, you should attempt to increase the available credit on your credit card, just in case you might need it some day. It’s a great way to get a source of cash when you need to with very low monthly minimum payments.
A Low Interest Loan
Oftentimes, credit card companies send you offers for balance transfers at extremely low interest rates. For example, about a year or two ago, I got a balance transfer offer from Capital One for just 3% for the life of the balance.
If you’re borrowing at only 3%, you can invest in almost anything and get a higher return than that! Hey - it’s just free money lying around, when not take it?
Furthermore, the minimum payment is just around $40/month, so it’ll take me years to pay that off, gaining interest on the loan this whole time!
Make sure to watch out for these opportunities whenever they arise, as credit cards give you a cheap source of cash that is cheap to finance and great for the long term!
When most people think of risk in terms of their investments, they think of cash vs. stocks. They view their ‘low risk’ holdings as cash, blue chip stocks, bonds and their risky assets as stocks in general, especially small cap stocks. While there is an element of truth in this, a key point in understanding risk is time frame.
It is definitely true that cash is far less risky than stocks in the short term. After all, cash is cash. A dollar today is worth a dollar tomorrow. Whereas with stocks, any one company’s stock can go to zero. While holding a diversified portfolio reduces risk from any one stock, your portfolio can drop by 50% in a year, as happened to most investors in 2008.
The key element of this though is that cash is much safer in the short term. It is very risky though to have strictly cash in the long run. Let’s say you are a 25 year-old saving for retirement. You allocate $500 a month towards savings, putting $500 a month for the next 20 years for retirement. Your choice is stocks, cash, or bonds. You may think you are playing it safe if you just put that $500 in cash every month and conservative if you do a mix, though mainly cash and bonds. In fact, you are doing something that is quite risky. You are making a huge bet that cash will outperform the stock market over multiple decades, which has never been the case. It is true that the daily, monthly, and even yearly swings of the stock market are painful. But if you truly do buy and just hold for decades, you will come out a winner in the long-term. Since your time frame as a 20 something and 30 something saving for retirment is well over 20-30 years, putting your money in anything but stocks is a very poor bet. If you are putting your money entirely into cash, then you are in fact taking a large risk with your money.
If you put your retirement savings in cash instead of stocks for 20-30 years, then you will slowly see your retirement savings dwindle in comparison to what you put in, since inflation will eat away at it. Whereas your colleague who put his money in stocks will see capital appreciation. Your colleageue will have a much earlier and better retirement than you, since you scared yourself out of ever making a decent return on your money.
Among my friends and family, most people think of me as the “internet business guy.” Because of this, they pitch me an idea every now and then about a website they think of.
Sometimes, the ideas are ok. Sometimes they are difficult to impossible to implement. Most of the time though, I think people have a hard time understanding just how hard it is to make money off of any one website.
When it comes to a website business, people immedietly think of the youtubes or the facebooks of the world and think that if they make a good enough website, it’s a hundred million dollar windfall. It just doesn’t work like that. There are very few big websites like that out there.
Most of the time, when people try to shoot for some huge idea like this, they ultimately fail and just lose their investment. This is because they try to do everything at once or try to tackle something they don’t really know about. Remember Facebook? Even Mark Zuckerberg started out small there. He just made a simple website where Harvard classmates could create an account and have their own page. He then expanded it to various colleges across the US before opening it up to the world. Bit by bit, not all at once.
If you want to make extra money online though and want to actually make money, it’s best to not think in terms of facebook or youtube. Instead, think small. Think of something you actually understand and know about. Think about how you can develop a website cheap and efficiently.
If you want to create a media website, essentially an information website, then write about something you know about. A good way to monetize a website like this is through Google Adsense or an affiliate program that matches your websites content. Keep in mind though that even if you are on top of Google for whatever niche you are in, you still probably won’t make that much money. Each daily visitor will probably be worth $.01-$.05 and most of these websites don’t get much more than 100-1000 visitors a day. But hey, an extra $300 a month or so never hurt anyone!
If you are going to try to sell something, understand the business first. Keep track of how much you are paying for your visitors (via PPC or whatever) versus how much money you make per visitor. Don’t blow all your money all at once by overpaying for traffic.
Likewise, if you are trying to hit a homerun with the next big social network….just stop. That’s all I can say. The whole social networking thing is a huge bubble. Facebook and Myspace are already here. People say there is still room for niche social networks, but can you name one niche social network that is that succesful? Don’t spend a lot of money building a userbase and hoping someone will buy you out for a huge sum of money. Chances are, you won’t find anyone interested.
This site was recently featured in a blog carnival about credit cards.
The carnival had many interesting articles about personal finance and smart credit card use. I encourage you to check it out!
Are you a beginner investor looking to learn more about the market? Here is a list of some of the more helpful free web resources related to stock investing:
Yahoo Finance: Detailed site that is great for information on individual stocks. It has quotes and important data, such as the company’s balance sheet, earnings estimates, and inside ownership.
Seeking Alpha: This site is a compilation of articles written by independent authors. Some of the commentary is pretty insightful, whereas others is just paranoid dribble.
The Motley Fool: While most of the articles are very fluffy and aimed to just sell their newsletters, their CAPS section is pretty solid. It has a lot of opinions and information from individual investors.
CNN Money: Keep up to date with the latest market news here.
Stock Investment 123: Helpful beginners guide to stock investing.
Are you the type that is prone to spending too much on your credit card and paying way too much in interest or late fees? Here are a few tips for you:
1. Keep as few cards as possible. Don’t be lured into the signup bonus miles or whatever. Whatever signup bonus feature they are offering you pales in comparison to how much you will end up paying in fees and interest from piling on debt onto the card and/or forgetting to make a payment.
2. Keep a set date that you always pay your credit cards on. Utilize their autopay feature if you can.
3. Start using one credit card moreso than others. This way you can pay off your other credit cards and cut down the amount of debt you have sprawled around.
and if needbe
4. Cancel your credit cards once you are able to so you no longer wind up in more credit card debt.