Credit Card Tips During a Divorce

Credit card debt is a factor to consider during a divorce. You aren’t just separating your lives, but your finances as well. If you do this correctly, you can avoid a financial mess and go on with your life. If it is done incorrectly, you could have a financial disaster that ruins your credit and you will pay much more than lawyer fees.

Here are some credit card issues to address if you are going through a divorce:

1. Get a complete picture of your debt. Get a copy of a credit reports from all three agencies for you and your spouse. Make a list of every open credit account and whether it is a joint or individual account. You may be surprised to find active accounts that you didn’t know existed.

2. Close joint accounts. Joint accounts are held by you and your spouse together, and both …

Pitfalls of Paying Taxes with a Credit Card

April 15th is one month away. While many consumers struggle to find ways to pay their income taxes, credit card issuers are encouraging people to use the convenience of paying with their card.

But consumers should avoid paying their income taxes with a credit card.

Credit card payments of taxes are actually made to third-party providers which are contracted by the Internal Revenue Service. Most processors charge a 2.49% fee for processing your credit card payment, making this an expensive convenience. Some, like FileYourTaxes.com, charge as much as 3.93%

The 2.49% processing fee adds $199 to an $8,000 tax bill. If you don’t immediately pay off the credit card bill, interest charges add even more. Assume you charge $8,000, your interest rate is 15% and you pay $400 per month–it will take 24 months to pay off the balance and you will pay an additional $1,333 in interest …

Consumers to Lose Access to One Credit Score

Credit scores are the only windows that consumers have on how they look to lenders when they apply for a loan and the rates they can reasonably expect to receive. Unfortunately, one window is about to be closed by Experian on February 13, when it discontinues the distribution of Experian based FICO scores and reports from MyFico.com.

FICO is the credit score created by Fair Isaac and the score that is most widely used by lenders. MyFico.com is Fair Isaac’s consumer website that allows people pay to see their credit score. Each person has three FICO scores that are based on data provided by Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. After February 13, consumers will only be able to get two scores–those provided by Equifax and TransUnion.

“If you are about to apply for a credit card, mortgage, or auto loan, it may be a good idea …

FICO Introduces New Credit Scoring System

Forget the score of the Super Bowl. Your most important score is your credit score, and one of the most widely used scoring models, FICO, is making changes to provide lenders a more accurate evaluation system.

Fair Isaac’s new scoring system, FICO 08, helps lenders assess what kind of credit risk you are. This determines how much interest you pay when you take out any kind of loan. The new system has the same scoring range, 300-850, but it is expected to increase the accuracy of lending decisions by 5% to 15%.

According to FICO, the former credit score evaluates consumers based on the worst performance on any credit obligation. FICO 08 will evaluate consumers based on the degree that negative performance across all credit obligations.

“This will be helpful for creditors. The more accurately they can predict the consumer’s borrowing and payment …

Living Off of Your Credit Cards

It isn’t news to anyone that the economy has been on a downward spiral for the past several months. Even if you don’t live in the United States, you are feeling the tightening of your budget and the queasy feelings inside the stomach of day traders and financial institutions around the world. People have started living a little more frugally by pinching pennies, hitting sales racks at stores when it is completely necessary to go shopping, clipping coupons, carpooling to work and back and so on and a lot of families have begrudgingly started living off of their credit cards and putting their entire financial stability and credit at stake to make it through these hard economic times.

There are a great deal of sacrifices one makes when even faced with no …

Bank Account Belly Somersaults

Working as a freelance anything definitely has its ups and downs.

On one hand, you have the luxury of working when you want, not having to ask your boss if you can duck out for a smoke or have to plan your meals around a business schedule. On the other hand, you always tend to not work as much as you had planned, get distracted a lot more easier especially if you do work that puts you in front of a computer and of course there is the case of the impatient freelancer who checks their PayPal and bank account and the client who suddenly disappears right in time–Just as soon as you send out your invoice.

As I have already blogged about, Victoria’s Secret is currently in the midst of having their semi-annual sale; that combined with a wedding reception I attended recently that …