CreditKarma is giving away free credit scores. Usually websites give you free credit reports, but they don’t tell you the actual credit number but CreditKarma will! This service is free to use and allows you see your score change daily. The reason the site is free is because they make their money off advertisements and affiliate offers.
So why are credit scores important? Credit scores are used to rate how reliable you are in paying loans back. The number way to raise this score is use a credit card and pay it back monthly. I got my first credit card when I turned 18 and now I have a fairly high score. I purchase everything with my credit card and pay it back on time. Another way to get your credit score up is to take out a loan and pay it back on time. I took out a secured loan, basically paying for a loan, and now every month when I pay it back my credit score rises. If you ever plan on getting a loan or applying for a credit card, the higher your credit score the more competitive rates you’ll get; however, Income plays a big role in applying for loans, but having a great credit score can only help.
CreditKarma has a nice finance blog run by Kenneth Lin; if you’re interest in money, you should definitely check it out. They also have the hottest credit card and savings account offers. CreditKarma is really easy to use and it only takes seconds to sign up. This site is really web 2.0 and you should definitely check it out.
I just paid my Sprint cell phone bill and had to share this with the people who don’t already know. Sprint currently has their employee plans open to the public.
You just need an employee’s email (leave a message if you’re having trouble finding one), which you can find pretty easy on Google, and you’re set. By the way, if you’re currently a Sprint customer you can change your plan without charge to SERO because Sprint changed a policy starting this year. All SERO plans come with unlimited texts, night and weekends at 7 PM, unlimited weekends, unlimited data (great for people with PDAs or smart phones), unlimited picture mail, and great Sprint service! 500 minutes is $30, 1250 is $50, and 2500 is $100. However, it is very easy to get added perks when you call Sprint and tell them you want to cancel. My roommate, “Ultrayeah,” has 700 minutes with 6 PM nights for $30 and I have 600 minutes with 6 PM nights for $30. I strongly recommend you get the SERO plan if possible, and please leave a comment if you need any more information.
This budget is reasonable based on how I live. My cellphone plan is very cheap and I spend little to no money on entertainment. I use Yahoo DSL, which is cheap but has very shitty service. The only cost that is exceptionally high is Food: I go out to eat everyday, because I don’t have the time or skill to cook. The miscellaneous costs include clothes and personal items, which I don’t buy every month, but when I do, can be very expensive: I treated myself to a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses this month.
Overall, I bet I could live happily with just making 25k a year. That’s plenty to cover my expenses and I could invest the rest. If I wanted to save money, I could get a house and the mortgage would definitely be lower than $770. Also, if I learned to cook, I could save a lot on the food expenses. Based on my budget I could go on at least one vacation a year, or buy a new car.
This just goes to show you don’t have to be a millionaire to live a great life.
If ya’ll have a savings account at a local bank, such as Chase or Bank of America, get rid of it! I’m almost positive that your interest rate is lower than any online savings. When I was with Bank of America, their savings rate was like 1% or .05%; I don’t remember exactly, but I know it was ridiculously low. The only reason there is a savings account is because the banks need to borrow money: They take your money at a low rate and give it to somebody at a higher one. I’m not sure what the savings rates are now, but I can guarantee it’s even lower than before. The Federal Reserve cut interest rates that the banks can borrow at, and now they don’t need to use your money anymore; therefore, you will get a rate closer to 0% than 1%.
But there are still a few banks out there that have a competitive rate. All those online banks don’t have a high enough market share to charge low rates, so they offer great savings. Yesterday, I ditched Emigrant Direct, which had a savings of 2.95%, for CountryWide: They have the highest rate online-4%. It seems their rates don’t flucate as often as the other online banks; I called and asked them what percentage their rate changed within the last month. They told me .25%, which is amazing compared to Emigrant Direct’s 1.25% drop. So if you’re too scared to invest your money in the Stock Market or FOREX, then a good online savings account is just what you need.
My very first credit card-Gold Card From BOA- is about to expire next month. It was the most pointless card I ever got: I had to pay to receive the card and it had no rewards plan. Oh well at that time I had no credit, so that’s probably the only card I could have gotten. Because it’s expiring I want to get another card to replace it. There were two things that I considered when looking for a card: Rewards and spending limit.
 Right now, I’m using my debit card to pay for my affiliate marketing, because my limit isn’t high enough on my card cards. That becomes a big hassle: I get quite a few charges a month and have to deposit money every few days. To solve this problem, I looked for a card that has very flexible credit. Luckily, American Express has charge cards, which don’t have a preset spending limit, but you usually have to pay it off within one month; otherwise, they charge pretty high APR rates. Now to solve the second part of my problem-need rewards- I looked into the “ONE” charge card. Not only does this card have a no preset limit, but for every dollar you spend you get 1% of it put into a high-yield savings account! This is freaking awesome, because the AMEX savings account has a higher yield than my emigrant direct savings account. Basically, I can spend a lot of money and earn 1% for each dollar. Needless to say, I got this card.
 I was thinking about taking out some money from this card, maybe 10k, and putting it into a savings account for one month. I won’t be able to qualify for that 1% of purchases, but I think I can make more than the fee for takeing the money out. So if this works, AMEX is paying me to have this card; how sweet is that? Other thing I though of is buying a new car with this card. If I spend 20k I’ll get 200 dollars off, not a bad deal at all.
If you watch the news at all you’ve heard about Bear Stearns falling apart and being sold to JP Morgan for only $236 million. The BSC stock was as high as $177 dollars last year and dropped almost 90% yesterday to just over $3. Many people made a lot of money buying puts and many people lost money thanks to Jim Cramer. Here is his great advice from late last week:
