Tip of the Week: Get in the Habit of Checking Your Credit Report

The Fair Credit Reporting Act guarantees each person free access to a credit report from each of the three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) every twelve months.  It is generally good practice to periodically check your credit report to make sure it is accurate and that there are no suspicious, fraudulent, or unauthorized activities.  [...]

Credit CARD Act of 2009 Kicks Off Today

Most of the much discussed and highly awaited Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 goes in effect today, 9 months since it was enacted. 80% of households in the US have credit cards, with only around half of them paying their balances in full every month.  Although the CARD Act [...]

The Right Way to Get Your Credit Report

If you haven’t reviewed a copy of your credit report, perhaps now is the time.  The Fair Credit Reporting Act guarantees each person access to a free credit report from each of the three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) every twelve months.  Make sure, however, that you get your credit history from AnnualCreditReport.com, because [...]

Update on the Credit Card Legislation: Paying in Full Does Not Make You a Free Rider; It Makes You Profitable

Last Thursday we wrote about two possible and essentially opposing ways that credit card companies could respond to the new legislation and affect users who always pay their monthly credit card bills in full and on time: increasing annual fees and limiting rewards programs or buffing up rewards programs to encourage those consumers to use [...]

New Legislation That Will Affect Your Wallet

I’ll be honest. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the new credit card legislation. I figured it wouldn’t actually affect me that much, since I always pay my credit card bill on time and in full (which everyone should do in the first place as paying 18% interest on credit card debt really is [...]