Imagine opening your credit card statement one morning and

discovering to your horror that you suddenly owe thousands

of dollars - on purchases that you never made.

Impossible?

Credit card fraud on the rise, so you need to treat your

card and its information with extreme care.

Here are 10 tips to help insure you’re not the victim of

thieves and fraudsters:

1. Sign new and replacement cards immediately.

2. Destroy the old cards by cutting them into pieces and

shred all old receipts and bills.

3. Don’t fax your credit-card number, if possible. Remember,

the faxed document could remain in sight at the other Read the rest of this entry »

Credit Cards and the APR that is used is a thing you have to read carefully before applying for any of them. Normally Credit Card companies calculate APR based on several different tables and to understand them is a must. These days, just about all companies that offer an easy way to pay your bills like the Phone or Internet are charging a fee. Oh, for anybody that doesn’t know what APR means, it simply means Annual Percentage Rate and is just an abbreviation used by many people in the Finance industry.
The Apr is always part of the deal when you receive the Credit Card and to understand it can avoid you a lot of problem later down the road.
Now, the fees we were talking about can be like in many cases starting at $1.00 and sometimes reach $3.50 so be aware of the offer for free service, it usually ends up costing you anyway. The Terms and Conditions part of your agreement must be red and understood. Not only do you have to pay your bill but you are also being charged for paying it. This is the way that these institutions are covering all the cost associated with having a card and the processing of your bills. Don’t forget that there are people behind the controls that also have to get paid for their work. When you take all these small transaction fees and start adding them up and multiply by the millions of transactions done than you can understand why these Institutions are making a lot of Money.

Another thing to watch out for is so called No Annual Fee. Well when you are being charged a fee on almost all your transaction and some of your other fees are cleverly hidden then you are still paying an annual fee but divided into many small fees that you don’t pay attention to. Well done and cleverly worded some of these Conditions that they have in their documents, so be aware of it.
Credit Cards are a clever invention and a source of buying power that If used right can be good but as in most cases it is the largest problem for many and also the reason for many Bankruptcies.