Credit Education

A few months ago, a relative of mine in Sacramento received a call from his granddaughter. She was calling from a jail in Florida after having crashed her car, broken her nose, and getting arrested. She was sobbing, and pleaded with him to not tell her parents or anyone else, and to send money along in the form of Best Buy gift cards so she could make bail. In a panic, he bought a large number of gift cards (to the strenuous objections of the Best Buy employees who were helping him make the purchase) and transferred them to his “granddaughter.” Read More

You can spot a Nigerian email scam without opening it. You know what you’re doing when it comes to keeping ID thieves from conning you. And if someone tried to get the kind of personal information needed to open credit in your name, well, it just wouldn’t happen. Read More

Those annoying, beeping and longer stays at the checkout counter when inserting a chip credit card into a clunky machine that may or may not work are paying off in one big way — less fraud.

Chip cards, also known as “EMV” cards for the three companies that developed the technology: Europay, MasterCard and Visa, have decreased counterfeit fraud, according to Visa. Most U.S. consumers became familiar with chip cards for their debit or credit cards in 2015, when U.S. banks started requiring retailers to have them or be held liable for in-store fraud.

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Do you feel overwhelmed by credit card debt?

Looking at a high interest rate and seeing how long it takes to tackle the principal can be disheartening. When faced with this difficulty, some consumers consider taking out a personal loan to pay off the debt.

While it can be a good move to use a personal loan to consolidate credit card debt, there are also downsides. Let’s take a look at how it works — and when it makes the most sense. Read More

Unless you live in a pineapple under the sea with a talking sponge, you’re probably familiar with the never-ending parade of cute animal pictures sent by text and email—friend to friend, email list to subscriber—and everywhere you look on social media. Hackers are counting on that. Read More