Book Reviews and Money Saving Tips

A Guest Post Whether you have started your own business or put yourself through school, many of us are now faced with a sizable debt that must be re-paid. And if the majority of your debt is on one or more credit card, dealing with repayment can become even more complicated. That's what is so cool about the new iPhone app, Pay Off Debt. If you are one of the many people juggling credit card debt, Pay Off Debt is designed specifically to help with managing credit card debt and is a great tool to manage your finances 24/7. Once you download Pay Off Debt, you can enter all your debts, and the app will help you figure out the most effective way to pay them off. You start by entering and labeling your debts and organizing them by types, such as student loan, credit card, or car loans. You will also enter the balances, interest rates, and payment information. As soon as you assign a label to each debt, the app will automatically sort them into categories. The app keeps track o...

Being a bit paranoid, I was always nervous about putting my credit card information on line for purchases. I got a specific credit card with a low limit to protect myself. I only used that card for online purchases. Then the credit card company bumped up my low limit by a factor of 10 due to my paying my bills on time and defeated the whole purpose of lower liability. I know they claim you won’t be held responsible for more than $50, yadda, yadda. The folks who claim that are the same ones who hose over the poor schmuck that misses a payment and has his interest rate bumped so high that loan sharks would be ashamed. There is a surprisingly simple solution. Discover will provide you with a little popup program that assigns a unique credit card number each time you make an online purchase. That number is then specific for that online vendor. The number on the plastic card in your wallet is never used and thusly never exposed to online tampering. Plus the unique numbe...

The Marvels of Online Payment Having my own business for over 30 years had a measurable impact on my vacation time. Up to the last three years I had never taken more than 5 consecutive business days off in those 30 years. I realize I have more than a smidgeon of the little red hen in me but even realizing it didn’t help. I was paranoid about taking more time off. Now that I am retired I am able to take off more often and for longer periods. This impacts paying my bills on time. Introducing online bill payment, whoohoo what a marvel. Well, let’s just say that regardless of all of the propaganda to the contrary it is NOT seamless. Every vendor, bank, credit card etc. has their idea of how to do it. We spent literally hours and hours of time online, filling out forms, providing security information and plowing through terms and conditions. Once the bull work was done, I thought, ok we are home free. WRONG, one credit card will work through my bank’s account and another ...

Online Purchase Protection I’m a geek, I can’t hide it, in fact I revel in it. I love technology, learning new technology and yes, buying new technology. Much of my buying of technology occurs online. I am skeptical of online security. Daily you read of someone else’s database or web site being compromised. Up until recently I dedicated a single credit card as my online card and used only it for online purchases. Then the credit card company bumped up my credit limit significantly due to my paying the bills on time and not carrying a balance. Now the low limit credit card that I purposely kept low is now much higher than I am comfortable with for online purchases. I have ignored the opportunity to get the one time use credit card numbers as offered by many of the credit card companies. It seemed like it would be more trouble than it was worth. I finally took the time to read through the procedure and discovered I could download a software package to my computer th...