Lower your credit card rate
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I called my Citi credit card company today to inquire about a charge. I also took the opportunity to ask for an interest rate decrease. I wanted to give it a try and see if it would work, I mean after all I’ve been a loyal customer with Citi for 14 years. Citibank is my credit card company. The representative I spoke to said she would put in a request to have my rate decreased and then proceeded to put me on hold for about 2 minutes. After awhile, she came back on the line and voilà! she had good news. My rate was decreased from 16.99% to 15.74%. The decrease was not dramatic but it was lowered.
The motto here is, ask your credit card company for an interest rate decrease or a credit limit increase, if you have a good payment history with them, they just might oblige. Last year I requested a credit limit increase and it also worked. Credit limit increases will help your credit utilization ratio go up. This leads to a better credit score! Try it for yourself and let me know what your experience is like.
A Fresh Start!
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2012 is here and what better way to celebrate the new than by taking a fresh look at our finances? Are we saving accordingly? How are our investments doing, is our money growing or is it stale? Is our credit card company charging us too much in added fees? How about our utility providers, are they charging us too many services fees and what can we do about it?
Let’s take this time together to go over our overall financial health and pinpoint what we can make better. Next week, we’ll start by taking a close look at our savings, and then well sink our teeth into that stack of brokerage statements that have been sitting underneath out desk since last year. Each week we’ll take a look at a specific aspect of our finances and go over the bad, the good and the ugly so stay tuned!
A lifetime of free checking
When Bank of America announced its new monthly debit card fees, customers got upset. They started looking for ways to get around these fees by checking out better offers at other banks. One Long Island credit union in particular has been attracting these customers by offering new account holders guaranteed “fee free” checking accounts for life. Bethpage Federal Credit Union is offering new customers who open a Bethpage Bonus checking account a lifetime of no debit card fees, no transaction fees, no monthly maintenance fees, no minimum balance fees and no ATM fees for using other banks’ ATMs. The only fees they charge are the insufficient funds and overdraft fees. According to the New York Times, this credit union has opened 1,500 new checking accounts- double the regular account openings for a three-week period. Since more big time banks are trying to add all kinds of fees to customer accounts, offers such as the one this credit union is offering is sure to attract the customers these big banks are letting slip away.
Ways to Find Financial Peace (Part 1)
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In order to gain a foothold on your financially busy and complicated life, you’ll need to be proactive. Cathi Brese Doebler author of “Ditch the Joneses, Discover Your Family” and founder of Ditchthe.com has some good tips on how to find financial peace in our lives. “One of the things to focus on is on setting a budget.” she says Doebler.
Doebler gives three steps for budgeting:
1. Brainstorm all of the items you spend money on in a year, and then make a list of each of the items.
2. Go through the list and check off all of the items that are truly necessities. All of the remaining items are not necessities, but are called “wants”.
3. Decide which of the “wants” you can stop buying. Determining which items you “want” versus which items are necessities will help you to better manage your spending.
Joel Ohman, Certified Financial Planner and founder of CarInsuranceComparison.com suggests savers write down an action plan for getting on track financially. “This can make all of the difference in helping one to feel more relaxed and sleep better at night because the focus shifts from a financial problem to a financial plan,” he says.
He adds that carrying high interest consumer debt (especially when used to purchase non -appreciating and non- income producing assets) is almost never a good idea. “These are the biggest sources of worry, frustration, and stress in the lives of most consumers. Working to cut out this type of debt and staying away from it will go a long way to bringing peace and stability to your finances and your disposition.”
Ways to Find Financial Peace (Coming soon!)
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Top reasons why we don’t save!
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We all have excuses on why we don’t save enough. We have children, we want to go on a vacation, we just don’t have the time, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on till the break of dawn. Right? Well, the list goes on if we let it, but there are ways to sneak in savings.
Jonathan Stein, CEO of the investment site Betterment says, people regularly overspend and don’t save enough money to achieve the goals they have planned for the future. Whether their goal is to afford retirement, college tuition, or big-ticket purchases, saving with an eye towards future financial needs is key. In other words, “I live paycheck to paycheck. I save for short term things.”
“I have a savings account, isn’t that enough?”
Stein says, “People don’t take enough investment risk with their savings to achieve their goals. Instead of investing in stocks and bonds, they park their money in a savings account, which has its own risk: not keeping up with inflation.” He says that under-investing is what happens when people fail to see the huge opportunity cost of parking money in savings.
Sometimes we’re just too darn busy!
This one’s a biggie. When we fail to maintain our accounts, we lose. “People tend to slack off after they’ve set up their accounts, says Stein, “That’s like joining a gym and then never going to work out – you get little benefit.” It’s important to stick to rebalancing, contribution and diversification routines, or, if you’re subject to slacking, like most of us, chose a service that does these important things automatically for you he says.
Ways to overcome bad habits
How much can you contribute?
Stein advises savers to decide how much money they need to contribute regularly to meet their goals. “Work backwards from where you want to end up and understand that you’ll need to be patient with yourself and the markets.”
Maximize risk
Another strategy he suggests is to maximize the risk we’re taking with our savings, given of course our limits for risk tolerance because as he puts it, what may seem like playing it safe could actually be ruining our chances of ever hitting our financial goals.
