Choosing The Best Credit Card Tips and Advice

This is a very basic but important tips written by Barbara Cooper, a Consumer and Family Economics Educator at Springfield Extension Center, University of Illinois. I hope this can help or give you some important details in terms of choosing the best credit card that suits your needs.

Here is the start of Barbara's great advice. The free credit card reports blog find this one extremely useful.

By law, credit card companies must tell consumers the interest rate and other costs of using their credit cards. This information is in a disclosure statement and is set up in a table format. You’ll find disclosure statements on credit card applications. If a card offer is made by phone and the card has an annual fee, the caller must verbally give you the disclosure information. If the card has no fee or the fee doesn’t go into effect until the card is used, the caller can mail you the information.

Understand Credit Card Terms
Annual percentage rate (APR) - The annual interest rate that the card issuer charges on the unpaid balance of the credit card. Some credit cards have set rates; for other cards with variable rates the interest rate changes. The disclosure statement gives the guidelines used to decide what variable interest rates will be. If a credit card offer has an unbelievably low rate, it probably is an introductory rate. After the introductory period is over, the rate will increase. A
low rate would be 5% while 21% would be high.

Grace period - The length of time you have to pay your bill before interest is charged on the purchases. Most companies offer 20 - 25 day grace periods. Even though companies have grace
periods, most charge interest from the day you make a purchase if you already have a balance on the credit card.

Annual fee - A charge you pay once a year for the right to use a credit card.

Minimum finance charge - The least you’ll have to pay if you have a balance on a credit card.

Transaction fees - Fees you have to pay for cash advances, late payments, or charging over your credit limit.

Periodic rate - The APR divided by 12


Compare credit card terms.
Call three banks, credit unions, or savings and loan institutions to find out about the terms offered on a Visa or MasterCard. Or compare the terms on three credit cards you have now or on credit card offers you’ve gotten in the mail. Read the disclosure statement to find this information.

Analyze the offers.
Issuers of credit cards use different methods to compute the monthly finance charge. Most companies use the average daily balance method to figure finance charges. They add the new purchases to any old debt after the end of the grace period and divide by the number of days in the billing cycle to compute the balance on which you pay interest. Beware of a “two-cycle” average daily balance method. It uses the total of the average daily balances for two billing cycles even if you paid the balance off the previous month.

Credit card choice depends on how you use your creditcard.
For example, if you always pay your monthly bill in full, the best type of card is one that has no annual fee and gives you a grace period so you don’t pay interest if you pay your balance each month. If you carry a balance on your credit cards, look for a lower annual percentage rate and the average daily balance method of computing the finance charge If you carry a balance on your credit card, use the information below to estimate how much you pay each year to use your credit card. You’ll find your average monthly balance on your credit card statements.

Calculate Finance Charges
Average monthly balance you carry on card ______ x the periodic rate of ______ = interest paid ______ x
12 months = ______ + annual fee of ______ = Total yearly cost of ______.
(If you get cash advances, pay late, or go over your credit limit, add the transaction fees to your total.)

Example:
Average monthly balance of $1250 x periodic rate of 1.5% (1250 x .015) = interest paid $18.75
x 12 months = $225 + annual fee of $20 = Total yearly cost of $245

Hope the above article/piece of advice enlightens you up. More of the great tips regarding credit cards will be posted soon here at the Free Credit Card Reports blog.

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Credit Card Debt Statistics And Few More Tips

Do you know that one out of three high school seniors uses credit cards?

A bit of information about the current statistics.

1. 82% of college students carry a monthly debt of under $1,000, and over 59 percent of those students were able to pay their balance off each month.

2. 10% of college students carry a balance of over $7,800 and the average student has a debt of $3,200.

Yet as parents know, credit card debt statistics of teenagers can be deceiving. It may seem nice that those students are able to pay off their debt each month, but only 40 percent of those students actually do so.

That leaves 60 percent of those students that have unpaid credit card debt accumulating interest.

What parents can do about this?
Parents do have a lot of responsibility in terms of financial advices that they can give to their children; specially those who are already holding a credit card.

The most important thing that parents can their child is credit is okay, as long as it is used responsibly. Explain to them that 40 percent of students paying off their cards each month are being responsible and building up great credit. Show them how good credit means that they will be able to pay less for cars, houses, and will even help them get a job one day.

Credit Card Usage is Addictive!

Usage of credit card is quite addictive. Imagine if your child gets hook up with it, they will end up in the hole of debt world.

No statistic will teach your child as much about credit card debt than real world experience. But you may immediately start with their allowance.

Teach them how to budget and save for things that they want. Start off by allowing your child to pick out one item, and then teach them how to save a little every week out of their allowance to buy the items.

Credit Card Company Offers
Many companies now do offer credit cards on teens on high school seniors. Credit card companies do a very good job of making credit seem like no big deal to most teens. They lure teens in with big promises, but forget to tell them about the fine print.

If ever you want to check your kids credit card history, check my post about free credit reports without using a credit card for useful information and advice about it. Make sure to visit more often here at Free Credit Card Reports blog for other important details that I will be posting soon.

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Free Annual Credit Card Reports Authorized Website

In regards with my first post entitled Free Credit Card Reports Important Facts, Only one website is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law — annualcreditreport.com. Other websites that claim to offer “free credit reports,” “free credit scores,” or “free credit monitoring” are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program. In some cases, the “free” product comes with strings attached.

For example, some sites sign you up for a supposedly “free” service that converts to one you have to pay for after a trial period. If you don’t cancel during the trial period, you may be unwittingly agreeing to let the company start charging fees to your credit card.

We must be very careful in terms of logging in or in dealing with such Free Credit Card Reports because there are many phishing websites or those impostor websites that tries to steal that precious piece of your personal information.

According to AnnualCreditReport.com, their central site allows you to request a free credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

The above statement literally means that you can only check your reports once a year (once every 12 months) tru their site. So make sure that you will only check or request that report if necessary and really needed.

Also, AnnualCreditReport.com warns and advices their users and/or visitors to check and be aware on how they arrived from the site. This thing can make you ensure that you are visiting the legitimate and only trusted site by the FTC. To ensure that you are visiting the legitimate site, type https://www.annualcreditreport.com directly into the address bar on your browser. You will never receive an email directly from the Annual Credit Report Request Service.

With the above information given, I hope that you have now some insights, information and a piece of data that you can rely on upon checking your free credit card reports. Just always be safe, attentive and most of all; be very vigilant on making online query about your credit cards.

If you have anything to say or to add about this post of mine, please feel free to leave it on the comment section.

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Free Credit Card Report Important Facts

This blog will serve as a hub, a connection link to all other website or webpages, article and blogs that offers information, details and data regarding free credit card reports or free credit report without a credit card issues. All information that will be posted here will be based on the personal research, studies and opinions of the owner/writer.

To begin with, below is an excerpt of data/information being posted at the Federal Trade Commission website.

Your Access to Free Credit Reports

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — to provide you with a free copy of your credit report, at your request, once every 12 months. The FCRA promotes the accuracy and privacy of information in the files of the nation’s consumer reporting companies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation’s consumer protection agency, enforces the FCRA with respect to consumer reporting companies.

A credit report includes information on where you live, how you pay your bills, and whether you’ve been sued or arrested, or have filed for bankruptcy. Nationwide consumer reporting companies sell the information in your report to creditors, insurers, employers, and other businesses that use it to evaluate your applications for credit, insurance, employment, or renting a home.

A Warning About “Imposter” Websites

Only one website is authorized to fill orders for the free annual credit report you are entitled to under law — annualcreditreport.com. Other websites that claim to offer “free credit reports,” “free credit scores,” or “free credit monitoring” are not part of the legally mandated free annual credit report program. In some cases, the “free” product comes with strings attached. For example, some sites sign you up for a supposedly “free” service that converts to one you have to pay for after a trial period. If you don’t cancel during the trial period, you may be unwittingly agreeing to let the company start charging fees to your credit card.

Some “imposter” sites use terms like “free report” in their names; others have URLs that purposely misspell annualcreditreport.com in the hope that you will mistype the name of the official site. Some of these “imposter” sites direct you to other sites that try to sell you something or collect your personal information.

Annualcreditreport.com and the nationwide consumer reporting companies will not send you an email asking for your personal information. If you get an email, see a pop-up ad, or get a phone call from someone claiming to be from annualcreditreport.com or any of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies, do not reply or click on any link in the message. It’s probably a scam. Forward any such email to the FTC at spam@uce.gov.

Read more of this very informative and useful detail entitled Facts for Consumers: Your Access to Free Credit Reports at the FTC official website.

Stay tuned at this blog post for more information regarding free credit card reports and free credit report without a credit card.

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