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Discover® More Wildlife
Intro Rate: 0.00%, Time Period: 12 Months, APR:
10.99%. |
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Advanta Platinum BusinessCard with Unlimited Rewards
Intro Rate: 0.00%, Time Period: 15 Months, APR:
7.99%. |
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Citi® Platinum Select® MasterCard
Intro Rate: 0.00%, Time Period: Up to 12 Months,
APR: As low as 8.49%. |
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Blue from American Express®
Intro Rate: 0.00%, Time Period: Up to 15 Months, APR:
4.99% (for life on transferred balances). |
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Advanta Life of Balance Platinum Card
Intro Rate: 2.99%, Time Period: Until Paid |
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Chase Platinum Visa®
Intro Rate: 0.00%, Time Period: 12 Months, APR:
11.99%. |
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Discover® More Card
Intro Rate: 0.00%, Time Period: 12 Months, APR:
10.99%. |
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In This
Issue
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Cool Quote |
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Paying back only 19 cents on the dollar |
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STATISTIC: Bankruptcy Filings 2008 |
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10 Things Millionaires Won't Tell You |
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Financial Independence |
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"I can do this!" |
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American Express sued over policy on gift
cards |
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Household Math™: What is APR? |
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Money is a Family Affair |
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Credit-Card Rage |
Cool Quote
"God's dream is that you have an abundance, that you be
totally out of debt, pay your house off, pay your credit cards off, and have so
much overflow that you can be a blessing to everyone around you!"
--Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church, Houston, TX
More cool quotes from past issues
One of the topics I cover in my book, Talk Your Way Out of
Credit Card Debt, is how to negotiate settlements. That's when you contact your
creditor and say something like, "I know that I owe $5,000, but how about I pay
you $2,000 and we're done?"
I've helped people with these negotiations, and I've helped
teach others how to do it themselves. Nothing makes my day more than receiving
the success stories of those that have read my book and saved a bundle on their
own! This one is great...
Finish reading this article
Chapter 7 filings totaled 615,748, up 36.7 percent from
the 450,332 Chapter 7 filings in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2007.
Chapter 13 filings totaled 344,421, up 16.9 percent from the 294,693 filings in
the same time period in June 2007.
More credit card and debt statistics
10 Things Millionaires Won't Tell You
A million dollars may sound like a fortune to most people,
and folks with that much cash can't complain -- they're richer than 90 percent of
U.S. households and earn $366,000 a year, on average, putting them in the top 1
percent of taxpayers. But the club isn't so exclusive anymore. Some 10 million
households have a net worth above $1 million, excluding home equity, almost
double the number in 2002. Moreover, a recent survey by Fidelity found just 8
percent of millionaires think they're "very" or "extremely" wealthy, while 19
percent don't feel rich at all. "They're worried about health care, retirement
and how they'll sustain their lifestyle," says Gail Graham, a wealth-management
executive at Fidelity.
See story here
Financial independence, by its very definition, means to
not be dependent on anyone or anything for our financial needs. That requires
being free from debt.
When asked what they would do if they won the lottery,
most people say they would pay off their debts. Just imagine what it would be
like not to owe any money?
We'd all like to be free from owing money. But something
has happened to us over the past couple of generations--we've come to accept
debt as just another part of modern life.
It doesn't have to be that way.
Finish reading the article
Since my income was only able to carry household expenses
and a few credit cards, I began searching for companies that help to settle
credit card debts and fix your credit at the same time. They would only
guarantee that they would settle at 65 to 70 cents on the dollar and would take
you 3 to 4 years to fix credit. I would have had to pay $500 per month to get
this taken care of. Part of my job as a Realtor is to negotiate short sales and
I've negotiated several at about 60 percent of the fair market value so I
figured that there had to be a better way to negotiate with credit cards. I went
to Amazon and looked up books on settling credit cards, and I found Scott's book.
I read through the scripts and dialogs he had in the book and I said, "I can do
this!" I do this all the time with major lending institutions. So far I've
settled on $19k of debt, and I am working on about $25k more to be finished with
this process.
--Robert
Learn how to "Talk Your Way Out of Credit Card Debt"
American Express sued over policy on
gift cards
To Jemi Goodman, who wanted to do something nice for her
daughter-in-law, buying a $100 American Express gift card turned out to be such
an "injustice" that she's launched a $5 million class-action against the
financial giant.
When the card balance was $2.75, merchants refused to
accept it even in split transactions, according to the suit filed in federal
court in Central Islip, N.Y., last week by Goodman, a business manager who
bought the card in September 2006.
"When you give a gift to someone, you're hoping to give
them something that they can enjoy without aggravation and without incident,"
Goodman said. "I felt ripped off."
See story here
Actually, it's the abbreviation for Annual Percentage
Rate. The APR is quite simply the periodic rate multiplied by the number of
periods in a year. For example, if the monthly rate of interest is 2 percent,
then the APR is 24 percent because 2 (the periodic rate) multiplied by 12 (the
number of periods, or months, in a year) equals 24 percent. Okay, so now that
you understand the APR, here is the question: What is the daily rate (one day is
the period) if the APR is 14.6 percent?
Answer this math problem
If you are single and don't have kids, this tip won't mean
much to you. For the rest of us that have others to consider when making money
decisions, it just may make things a little easier.
I guess the best knock-down, drag-out fights my wife and I
ever had were about money. No, it never came to blows because she's meaner than I
am. Believe me, you can have a lot of fights in almost 40 years.
Finish reading this article
Credit-Card Rage
David Giantomasi says he vigilantly paid his credit-card
bills each month. Even if he could only make the minimum payment, he made sure
to get all his monthly payments squared away. So he was shocked when the
interest rate on his Chase credit card suddenly jumped to 19.99% from 7.99%.
When Giantomasi called the card issuer to demand an explanation, he was enraged.
He was told that overall turmoil in the credit markets meant higher rates for a
number of customers.
Chase won't comment on individual cardholder accounts. "I
felt completely helpless," Giantomasi recalls. "These credit-card companies are
beyond the law and should be more tightly regulated."
See story here
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