Showing posts with label credit card debt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label credit card debt. Show all posts

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Take Precautions to Avoid Credit Card Debt & Fraud

Banks and Credit card companies provide services to their customers in order to earn money by helping their customers. They have no problem with the customers who have good credit rating. Since they want to make more and more money, it is beneficial for them if their money is in the pipeline.

When we accept and use credit card, we owe certain responsibilities. We need to deal in such a way that our working does not end up in deteriorating credit card rating. Let us see what we can do to deal effectively with credit cards. This is necessary to avoid the financial trap and black hole.

First off, when filling up the credit card membership form read each and every term and condition carefully. You should not hesitate in asking questions from the sales person who attend you. You should make sure that there are no hidden charges.

When they have been issued a credit card, you generally start using it and the credit card company sends monthly statement. Make sure to read each and every entry minutely. If you have any doubt, contact the credit card company immediately and ask questions politely which they are supposed to reply.

First, try to repay the small bills on time, within the same month. If for some reason you do not pay the bills and make minimum payments, make sure that payment is made on time within the due to date to avoid any late fee. Late fee is generally quite high. One should try to avoid late fee. If the payments are not made timely, credit card issuer can charge increased rate. This is one of the main reasons of piling up of credit card debt. This situation needs to be addressed to carefully.


Some people have the habit of carrying on credit card balance month after month. They feel that paying small minimum amount is easy. But if you calculate after a year, you will notice that you are payment more than double the amount and it is no wisdom payment hard earned money just in interests. It is therefore advisable to avoid carrying forward balance and accumulation of credit card debt. The same situation becomes reason to affect your credit card rating. Once your credit rating goes in negative, it becomes difficult to gain it back at least immediately.

If you have any grievance with the credit card issuer company, you can promptly take up with their representative in writing on talk on phone. But don’t just sit. It may give them impression that you are satisfied with the monthly statement. Whenever any discrepancy is noticed, the same should be brought to their notice promptly.

If for any reason you find yourself in credit card debt trap, it is advisable talk your credit card authorities immediately to arrive at a settlement. Explain the genuine reasons and they may help you in lowering the interest rate or turn the credit card into loan account which you can pay monthly.

Keep your credit card and secret pin numbers safely, better if you do not keep a written record of PIN numbers. It is enough if you cram and remember. In case of loss of credit card, the incident should be reported to concerned authorities promptly in writing as well as on phone.

These are some of the tips if kept in mind your credit card rating will always remain high and you will have no problems with credit card companies.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Low Cost and Cheap Debt Consolidation Loans

Once you have a good job or business, taking loans from financial institutions is not difficult at all. When you have good standing every credit card company and financial institution will be running after you to offer you loans at lucrative interest rates. On the other hand sometime we have to overburden ourselves with loans to deal with immediate financial needs. But one has ultimately to pay back all the loans with the all the interest and penalties piled up.

Taking loans and revolving credit becomes very easy. Heavens forbid, for any reason if downturn takes place, it becomes very difficult to manage with different debts like credit card debt, unsecured loan, education loan etc. When such a situation arises, there is always a way to get out of the situation and we can resort to debt consolidation.

The debt consolidation will allow you to pay one monthly payment instead of several payments. Once you have got your debt consolidated and payment starts, the debt collectors cannot harass you any more nor can they make any unsolicited phone calls at your work or home. You just buy peace of mind and regain financial freedom within short of few years.

Main benefits of debt consolidation will have you pay reduced monthly payment with decreased interest, single payment instead of several payments for a no. of different loans, avoid bankruptcy, no dealing with debt collectors and regaining of financial freedom back soon.

Here for debt consolidation also, you have to be cautious. You have to select debt consolidating bank very wisely and understand their terms and conditions carefully. When you find a debt consolidation deal beneficial, you can go ahead.

If You are Suffering from Credit Card Debt and have Loans to Repay, This Article May Help You!

This article is for those persons who are for any reason facing credit card debt crunch and are completely in the hole. This article will work only if you have willingness to put in at least two hours daily and to invest some money, to build online business to get rid of lenders.

If you are facing any kind of financial problems, you have a computer and internet and willing to work, this is the most important article for you.

As you know, there are lot of unique ways, some easy and some difficult, to make money on the internet. If you want to get rid of the credit card debts, set aside some time to work daily in the evening for two hours and start building your online business.

The only thing you need to understand is how this affiliate marketing business works. Once you have grasp of it, you can get started. You can just start with a blog.

Read some information about affiliate programs on the internet. Don’t get overwhelmed with the vast information. Read some blogs on how to make money on the internet. Only pick up the articles that are important to you. See we have no time to waste. Just don’t bother about someone asking you pay money for something. Many websites say that you can earn lot of money over night or in few days but to my knowledge there is no such way that can earn you money overnight without doing some work.

Research about some good affiliate marketing websites of successful affiliates and see how they are functioning. You need to model them. If you can model even 10% of their methods, you can be quite successful. Research what people are selling and what people are buying. This sort of research you can do easily on the popular search engines.

Once you have done your research, join some good products with clickbank.com. Registration with them is free and easy. Clickbank has thousands of merchants on its roll. When you have joined some good products, Clickbank will provide you with affiliate urls for the products you join, the unique merchant’s website address related to your name that you will promote on the internet and the merchant can track the sale. When people referred by you purchase stuff referred from your links, you earn commissions. These commissions are on an average 50% per sale or may be more or little less.

Here, it may be mentioned that two things are necessary. One – a web hosting account and a domain and an affiliate link cloaker. I will tell you in a minute why you need these items. You can find a link cloaker for free on the internet. The affiliate links that merchants generally give you are long and look mysterious. To change the links and make them small, you will need this link cloaker. Link cloaker is small software. When you run this software, you fill up some details. With the click of a button the affiliate link changes to the short url of your choice. You can read more about link cloaker on the internet. This link cloaker will also provide you a small html file. You will mention the cloaked link in your blog post. The html file which the link cloaker makes for you is required to be placed in a folder in your hosting account’s public_html folder. Apart from this you do not require anything.

Reason for link cloaker and hosting is that blogging platform would not allow you paste original raw affiliate links in between the blog posts. It only allows the files that end with htm, html or php. The links that merchant provide you end with different numbers like ref?id=3464345 or something like that. So for this reason you would require hosting account, domain name and affiliate link cloaker.

Once you have got hosting account, link cloaker and joined Clickbank products, you join blogger or wordpress and open a blog account. Now you write a very appealing review for the product you have joined and want to promote. Cloak its link and mention the same in your blog post at two-three places. In this way you start adding posts to your blog. Make sure that the headings of the posts you write are very good and persuade people to take action.

After you have made a few posts, you can apply to google for adsense account. You can then easily have adsense ads placed in your blog posts which too will earn you money. One more tip is that you can start blog on any topic of your choice you are expert at. But here the main purpose is earning money. So write articles on money and how your visitors can save money and benefit from your products.

In all probability, in a few days your blog will show up in search engines and start earning money for you which you can pay your lenders and towards credit card debt. The return will be exactly in proportion to your efforts. Therefore, this article does not stipulate that amount of money that you can earn since it is directly related to your skill and knowledge of internet marketing. If you feel like you can devote time and some money, you can try this method to get rid of credit card debts.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Before You Buy a New Credit Card Read the Fine Print

While selecting a credit card, a user may want to take into consideration various elements like annual fee, transaction charges, late fee charges, over-limit (amount withdrawn over and above the limit of approved credit card limit) charges etc. While credit cards have their own benefit, they warrant greater responsibility also.

At the time of issuing a credit card, the credit card issuing banks, or their agents (who are sometimes commission based and out-sourced) seem to be very sweet. At this time they are even ready to ignore some of their conditions in a hurry to grab the customer and to issue the credit card. They even ignore prospective customers’ financial standing

You have got a credit card and you are happy. But this happiness is likely to turn soon into nightmare once you find it difficult to either in repaying in whole or in making regular minimum payment. Indian consumers are not at all happy the way banks authorized third party debt collectors and settlement agencies are working.

Credit card interest rates add up to more than 30 percent and in many cases, goes up to 50 percent where late payment and interest is added up. Although Reserve Bank has from time to time issued notifications for fair practice, banks swear by them but practically they do not seem to following up the RBI directions in letter and spirit.

Mr. C. V. Giddappa, general secretary of the Credit Card Holders’ Association of India (a very important organization which looks into the interests of credit card holders in Bangalore), pointed out that “These banks are cheating the public”. Mr. Giddappa’s organization estimates that Indian consumers are paying 16.4 million rupees a day (more than $406,000) in unfair charges, and is agitating for a debt-free India by 2020.

Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTP), Government of India has started an investigation of card-selling practices of banks including Citigroup, HSBC and the local banks ICICI and HDFC.

It is very important that before getting into the world of credit card full understand its terms and conditions, hidden and open. You may want to understand your needs. Do you really need a credit card or you are just buying it to boost social status.

Reserve Bank of India keeps an eye on the credit card issuing banks that they strictly follow best practices in issuing the credit cards, debt collection and other related services. To protect consumers rights, Reserve Bank of India issues Notifications from time to time and oversees its implementation. You can click this for more information.

At the end of the day, the mantra is buy a credit card only when you feel it absolutely necessary to have it. Otherwise, debit cards are good enough. If you keep your needs and wants within limit, there will never be any need for a credit card. Avoid as far as possible.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

8-Tips for Personal Finance and Money Management

One of the highest favor a person can do to him/herself is managing personal finances wisely especially when one is in job. It hadly matters whether one is on a small post or big post. One is forced to spend according to status. High status carries high responsibilities and high expenditue in management too. You needs to manage personal expenses to avoid going them out of your control.

In the present economic scenario, it has become all the more critical to manage finances. It becomes personal responsibility of everyone to spend money as wisely as possible. While tons of complex information and software is available on the internet to teach how to manage personal finances, the ACTION starts from you only. Unless you take action, nothing can happen.

This is what you can easily do and manage at your own level:

1. Set a convenient level of monthly saving say 10 per cent, or 5 per cent, whatever convenient according to your situation and stick to it.

2. Next tip is use crdit card wisely and rarely to avoid credit card debt. That too, only when you are sure that you can esily repay the balance within the prescribed period. Once you use a credit card, make sure to repay the amount within prescribed time limit. At the same time, resist the habit of keeping too many credit cards. Two cards should suffice.

3.Instead of frequenting grocery store every now and then, we can stock things of everyday use for two to three months, barring perishable items.This way we get lot of discount and save lot of money.

4. We can put a tab on monthly pesonal expenses and adhere to that limit at the same time avoiding the temptation of credit card use.


5. Avoid the habit of driving to small distances where we can walk easily. This way we can inculcate the habit of walking and benefit from the same.

6. Avoid the habit of impulse purchase for instant gratification. This habit is very dangerous. While you are ready to make an impulse buy, immediately postpone it to the next day.

7. Think at home before going to bed whether acquisition of such an article, was absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, you can acquire it next day.

Note: I also used to buy on impulse and temptation and amassed large number of books, CDs and toys. Now I finding a way to dispose them off.

8. The greatest mantra is never buy a thing unless it is absolutely necessary to buy for yourself or family.

This is very important that you take control of your money now and make a budget right today. Once you have a tab over your spending habits, bad economy can never impact you.

There is no doubt that when financial worry is there, several health problems also creep in. With budget control, you and your family will always remain happy and healthy.