Credit Card Now

You want a new credit card. You’ve narrowed down your credit card options. You even know what kind of credit limit you want with your new card. Did you know that the credit limit assigned to you is largely out of your control? Even if a bank or credit card company advertises credit limits “up to” a certain dollar amount, there’s no guarantee you’ll be approved for that maximum.

Even though the credit limit is at the issuing bank’s discretion, fortunately there are some things you can do to improve your chances of getting the credit limit you want. Here are some examples.

1. Set realistic goals.

While you can likely improve your situation to achieve a reasonable credit limit goal, you can’t expect a bank to sign over a huge line of credit that’s unreasonable based on your history and financial situation. If you have a s

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Tags: Credit Limit, Want

The Federal Reserve announced that it intended to keep low ongoing interest rates at their current levels for at least the next two years despite the recent downgrade in the US credit rating.

It hopes that a stable rate will encourage the lending and borrowing that so often sparks the economy.  Many consumers believe that this promise will keep their credit card APRs from rising.  Sadly, this thinking is mistaken.

Most experts are predicting a rise in credit card interest rates in the near future.  Card rates are not inextricably tied to the prime rate, which means that they can still go up even if the Fed is holding down the prime rate.  Card rates are variable, not fixed.  Variable rates are made up of an index and a margin.

The index is usually the prime rate.  This is the starting point for most variable rates.  The margin is the amount above and beyond the index that the issuer charges.  This margin can be as low or high as the lender chooses.  If the risk is high, the lender will probably raise the rate of the margin.  Most experts believe higher card rates will be in effect just in time for holiday spending.

Tags: Credit, Credit Card

Many people, many more than usual and many more than in past years, have recently experienced the trauma of not being able to make the house payment, not being able to catch up after delinquencies and the horror of foreclosure, not to mention the people who never really missed a payment but were completely unable to sell the home for as much as they owed when they needed to move, thereby resulting in a “short sale” on their credit report.

And all of these problems affect your credit scores and your credit reports. The question is how much? And how long? And what can I do to improve now that the crisis has past?

Well the people at FICO, the credit score people, have long been tight-lipped about how much these types and even other types of problems can affect you. You can check out this article on Mintlife, “How Mortgage Delinquencies Affect Your Credit Scores” to see some of the worst details.

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Prospective homeowners continue to be forced out of the housing market, with “first-time buyer blackspots” covering seven out of 11 regions in the UK and half of all UK tenants expecting rents to rise in the next year.

According to property website Rightmove, only 23% of people who intend to purchase a property in the next 12 months are first-time buyers, when 40% is considered normal for a healthy housing market.

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It seems impossible to escape the reach of the Kardashian family these days:

A hit reality show on E! network.

Enough magazine covers to wallpaper an aircraft hangar.

And now Kim Kardashian’s wedding has all of Hollywood talking.

Indeed, the omnipresence of the three sisters is inevitable. And this feeling of inescapability is just what the Kardashians like. Don’t believe us? Just take a look at the credit card (or shall we say, Kredit Kard) they introduced last year, and you’ll see just how predatory these three sisters really are. Thankfully, public backlash against the card’s outrageous policies led to its discontinuation just 19 days after its debut.

The first thing to note about the Kardashian Kard is that it wasn’t a true credit card; it was a cash card that you had to pre-pay money towards in order to charge anything on it. Because of

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Tags: Kim Kardashian, Wedding