Credit Card Offers

Tired of stuffing a rewards card and a debit card into your wallet? This summer, you could get a card that does both.

Offered by a tiny Florida company, the new card could wreak havoc with some of America’s largest banks. It also could also allow merchants to avoid the issue of interchange fees, a billion-dollar industry and the subject of a huge and expensive debate right now in Congress.

Here’s the idea: Starting this summer, a new generation of debit cards will be available directly from retailers. The cards will bear the retailer’s logo. When

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The latest regulatory filing from American Express recently revealed that the rate at which consumers were 30 days or more behind on their credit card payments fell to 2 percent in February, according to a report from Dow Jones Newswires. That rate was 2.1 percent during the previous month.

Meanwhile, the lender also said it saw the rate at which it charged off credit card accounts those so far behind in payments the balances were written off as uncollectable – hold steady at 3.8 percent, the same figure observed in January, the report said. The highest rate the company ever wrote off came in April 2010, when it hit 10.1 percent. T

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Income Tax

The largest tax that most people will pay is income tax. Basically, income tax is assessed on money you earn from your job. It’s declared on your Form W-2, your employer withholds the tax payments, and you are taxed based on the federal income tax rates. The tax rates are marginal tax rates, so the bracket you’re in will dictate how much your next dollar is taxed. For example, as a single filer, your first $8,500 of income (after adjusting for deductions) is taxed at 10%. The next $26,000 earned will be taxed at 15%, and so on. Your actual tax rate will never be as high as your tax bracket. It’

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The Durbin Amendment to the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is set to be official in a little over a month. The amendment would have the Federal Reserve limit interchange fees on debit transactions, the fee a bank charges to process card transactions, to a mere 12 cents. It’s a proposal they put out for comment late last year and it’s drawn a lot of criticism. There are two alternative interchange fee standards:

• Fee standard based on the costs with a safe harbor at 7 cents per transaction and a cap at 12 cents per transaction.
• A standalone cap at 12 cents per transaction.

By the Fed’s own calcluation, this is 70% lower than the 2009 average and the rule is set to take effect on July 21st, 2011. In addi

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Only Use Your Own Computer

Never log onto anything important from a public computer. This includes hotel lobby computers, local library computers, or even computers at your friends’ houses. You can never be sure how secure those machines our and it’s trivial to connect or install a keylogger somewhere. There’s also little reason to log onto anything important while you’re not at home because it can always wait until then.

Make Sure You Are On a Secure Site

The first thing you need to do is make sure that everything is secure on the financial web site. Be sure that you are visiting the official web site. This means that you can’t always trust emails that come claiming to be from your bank. The last

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When you purchase a product, you assume that it is safe to use. After all, we expect that companies (and the regulatory system) will ensure that products are rigorously tested for safety and sanitation before sending them to stores. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Every year there are hundreds of recalls. It is important for you to consider whether or not there could be a problem. You can get the latest news on recalls from the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Sometimes unsafe or unsanitary products slip through the cracks. When that happens, you might find yourself bitten by spiders, chewing on worms, or having to amputate your child’s finger. <

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