My boyfriend has been a Discover credit card holder for quite some time now, and actually he is the most happy with this card out of all of his cards (he has a Mastercard, Visa and American Express also).
He likes the Discover card because of the cash back rewards program that it has, but he noticed that a few months ago his interest rate went up. He called the company to see if there was anything they’d be willing to do to keep him as a happy customer.
They responded with a new credit card offer for a 1.9% introductory rate on all purchases and balance transfers up until June of 2007, which was actually far beyond his expectations. Needless to say, he is still a very happy customer of Discover, and will continue to use their credit card for a lot of his new purchases.
Oh, I did make him check to see what the rate would go up to after the intro period, and he said that it was in writing that it would only go up to the whatever the prime interest rate for credit cards is at the time the intro period is over.
I’d say this is quite a nice deal, and I’d recommend the Discover card to others as a fair and honest credit card company. I just wish they would accept them absolutely everywhere, or maybe they do now, I just haven’t noticed because I do not yet have one (I’m actually seriously considering getting a Discover card now though).
I read a really intriguing study that was done on human behavior when it comes to money, or more specifically to having and not having money or images of money in their head. A study was undertaken by a woman who noticed that she started to behave differently toward her friends and family on an interpersonal relationship level when she received a significant boost to her salary.
The study involved people being paid a small sum to take a little test, and little did they know that they were either exposed or not exposed to images of money, and this was the primary goal of the research, to see how the people who were exposed to monetary images and the people who were not, behaved differently after their “test”.
The findings undoubtedly point to the fact that money does change the way we view things. For example, we are less likely to ask friends for help to do things that we normally would have before money entered the picture. Also, money tends to make people less charitable in many cases, if you can believe that.
People who come into money or achieve significant increases in salary usually start to think that everyone should “help themselves” and become less helpful to peers. Not so attractive, is it? The important thing is, is to remember that we all are human, and it is always important to help your fellow man or woman, whether it has to do with expendable income or just help with anything.
Ameriprise is a company you may have heard of lately, since they seem to have upped their advertising budget, as I’ve seen quite a few commercials for them recently on the TV, as well as heard them on the radio.
Amerprise is the company formerly known as American Express, and it’s a financial services corporation, designed for one on one consultations on your personal money and financial health situation, as well as retirement status and goals.
I had an experience with these guys, and while the representative of their company had some valid information to present, I was turned off by several phone calls after not having called this guy back, so even though I was interested at first, the demeanor of the calls and the invasiveness ultimately made me turn away from the company.
What I was looking for was an all in one financial services team where I could get advice about my tax situation as well as help in my retirement and savings goals. They cannot help you with tax questions, and that kind of turned me off of the service also.
Like I said, I liked what the rep had to say in his brief lunch with me and some coworkers, but ultimately did not care for the overall marketing strategy the company had. I did not feel like they had my best interests at heart, just were trying to wrangle another client. That’s just my humble opinion though.
I’ve been reading a lot about how so many American families still live paycheck to paycheck, even those that most of us would consider in the upper echelon of the financial and economic American society, that make a household income of $200k or more per year.
But how could this be? I would think that this amount of money would allow any family to live comfortably.
But that is not always the case, even if families are not constantly taking vacations and indulging in all the finer things in life all the time, many are finding it hard to struggle by, and are using credit to get them by, only to find that they might be stuck in a high interest payoff.
This is why getting good deals on credit cards is so important, but not only that, good deals on loans and other lending agencies lump sum payments is important as well, so that you aren’t finding yourself in a neverending cycle of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Add a kid or two into the picture, and you’ve got all kinds of new expenses to think about. Doctor’s visits, clothes, toys, formula, you name it, kids are EXPENSIVE, and many people don’t really understand how expensive kids can be until they’ve had one or a few. They really can put a strain on anyone’s budget (although, from what I’m told, they’re worth it:)
I just had to laugh at this one. There are some myths going around about debit and credit cards, at least with my particular debit card, which is sponsored by Key Bank and features the “One Pass” where you can tap it and go (not sure what’s so great about this, I haven’t used this feature yet), and also featuring frequent flyer credit card airline reward points for Continental Airlines (I’m still 13,000 miles away from getting a free ticket, and I use that puppy all the time!).
Well, what many people didn’t realize about their debit cards and using the feature where you enter your pin, which is actually a more secure method to make sure it’s only being used by yourself, is that some banks will charge you for that privelege.
So, in other words, if you are not using your debit card with the “credit” option, using it like a credit card and not entering your pin number on the keypad, then you may be getting charged a nominal fee for doing that. Nominal fees can definitely add up though, so you will probably want to check before you start using your debit card with the pin number all the time.
Oh, by the way, sometimes I’m sure you noticed, some establishments will only take debit cards as a debit, not a credit, so sometimes you don’t have a choice. Sam’s Club and a few other stores I’ve noticed are like that.
This year, investment houses, especially those targeted to the “rich” and higher income people, like Goldman Sachs, are turning very high profits, thanks to a booming stocks and bonds market.
Might this mean that we are about to go through a huge economic boom again? It’s possible, especially since these investment companies have not seen this type of activity in a while. So what can it be? New money? Old money?
People maybe are starting to inherit their parent’s money more who have socked away a lot of money for their life savings? Well, it could probably be a lot of things, but rumor has it that the big one in the news, Goldman Sachs, is giving their employees the royal treatment after record profits this year.
They are showering their employees in the most appreciated gift of all from an employer to an employee : CASH.
There are some really excellent bargains around the holidays, to entice Christmas shoppers to buy more stuff, bigger stuff, and feel like they got a truly good deal on it. My problem is that many of these deals seem to hard to pass up on for clothes etc. for myself.
For instance, JCPenney’s offered a $10 off coupon if you purchased $50 or more, and $15 off if you purchased $75 or more, and since I only had one or two people I could actually buy the clothes and other items this coupon could be applied to, I ended up using the coupon on myself, all but for one present! likewise with some of my favorite stores for clothes, like Express and Limited.
They sent me coupons for $30 off a $100 order or more, and how could I pass up this great bargain? Of course, it’s Christmas sillies, but how could I not buy those clothes, when I was sure to buy those same clothes later in the year, only to pay the extra money for them? I also was enticed into opening a new store charge card for Express, since they were offering a $25 gift card as well as %15 off your current order.
Talk about a great deal! Any other time, I would have had an iron will not to pick up a new credit card, but throw a couple freebees in there, and my iron will turned to consumerism!
We’ve all heard the jokes about opening up a new savings or checking account and the cheapo “free gift” that you get for putting your trust and thousands of investable dollars with a particular banking or financial firm. How many times have you heard the free toaster thing, or the free mousepad, or free $25 CD or whatever this gimmick might be?
Well, many times the freebies that banks and financial institutions offer to get your business aren’t really all that great. Consider the fact that savings accounts, when compared to a money market account, offer a couple percentage points LESS than a money market account when it comes to interest.
Do you know how much a few percentage points of interest can mean when you’re talking about saving money for the long term? Thousands of dollars! And that’s not all, think about the principle of compound interest, where your money actually builds and builds on itself until it starts to actually compound on itself, which means it’s almost like you started off with a higher sum of money.
The thing is, savings accounts really do not make your money “work for you”. Are they liquid? Sure. Are they the most easily accessible form of liquid cash? Probably. Yes, they are good for emergency funds, but if you are looking to actually get a return on your money in the long term, please look into getting a money market!
Now here’s a story I absolutely loved to read. A man by the name of Muhammad Yunus who runs a specialized bank in Bangladesh, which specializes in “microcredit”, or giving small loans to those who are impoverished and would otherwise be turned away for even the smalles line of credit, to help them to rise out of poverty.
He says that before he won the Nobel Peace Prize, his cries for new and better programs to help those in poverty come out of it easier, or at least give them a better chance at life were ignored, but now that he has become a Nobel Laureate, his pleas for others to follow in his footsteps to help make the world a better place, as well as to help his own business grow and be able to give others a better shot at life will be heard loud and clear.
He’s now in high demand to speak with powerful politicians and others that can help him to make a huge impact on poverty and life betterment, and even drawing the attention of other philanthropists who have similar desires to make the world better through offering small loans and credit to those that have little financial means and may be able to better make their way in the world if they were just given a chance.
I was really inspired by this story, it made me feel that humanity really can be made so much better by just one seemingly small person, and that there really are still people in this world who inspire us to be our most charitable, perhaps even at the sacrifice of profit.
The mega coffee giant that is probably one of the biggest success stories in the past decade in the area of fast food/retail, has found a huge hit with it’s loyalty Starbucks card. What the Starbucks card is essentially is a prepaid credit card that can be used exclusively at Starbucks for your everyday cup of joe, and it can be recharged.
People love using it because they get points toward money off coffees of free coffees if they accumulate enough. The big draw to this is that many people get coffee every day, and they figure since they’re buying it anyways, they might as well be using a prepaid card and getting some sort of perk for using it all the time.
It is so successful that the card reportedly account for about 12% of their total business her in North America! That is absolutely crazy, and a huge marketing victory for the Starbucks chain!