1. Fixed interest is not fixed
2. Comparing APR is not an effective way to determine which credit card offers are better
3. You do not need a credit card to build your credit score
4. The universal default clause in your cardholder agreement states that your card issuer has the right to do anything they want (ei. increase interest, charge fees) if they think you pose a risk to them
5. If you apply for a credit card and get turned down it will hurt you credit score
6. Closing credit card accounts can hurt your credit score
7. In order to obtain a credit card, you should make at least a $95 per week income
8. Only 29% of U.S. households owe $1000 or more on their credit cards
9. About 50% of U.S. households do not pay their full credit card balance each month
10. 40% of U.S. households spend more than they earn

Do you know a fact about credit cards that you want to share? Leave a comment!

Credit cards are the product of a manipulative, sneaky, conniving credit industry. They are a ploy to give you a sense of financial security and power, but once you fall for one of their card tricks they suck the money out of you. The credit industry has manipulated their way into every part of our lives today. There’s barely anything that you can do without credit. It is almost a necessity to have a credit card in today’s society. This makes everyone of us prime targets for credit card issuers to dwindle our money.

Keep reading to find out everything you need to know to outsmart credit card issuers. Credit cards have lots of advantages and perks as long as you know the secrets to avoiding debt and unnecessary fees. Here are the tricks to look out for and perfect solutions to avoid them.

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This article comes from our first guest columnist Angel Hill. She lives in Savannah GA and has maintained excellent finances her whole life, partly because her mother is an accountant!

In today’s world, there is the perception that credit cards are king. Businesses and even lives are being built around credit cards, and the satisfaction of having everything you want instantly. The downside to this is that you have to pay these credit cards off – and this is where most people get stuck. They spend and spend, then fight an uphill struggle trying to pay their platinum super max master-visas off. In order to uphold their style of living, they survive by paying their minimum balances from month to month, even using one card to pay off another, and this does nothing to alleviate your actual debt, and lowers your credit rating. Many of my fellow college classmates have found that because their parents have such poor credit, they can’t qualify for student loans. So what do these students do? They get themselves a credit card to pay for school.

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How do people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get to be the billionaires they are today? Is it their integrity? Is it their ambition? Is it their entrepreneurship? Or is it their willingness to do anything? Actually, they are who they are simply because they are brilliant.

A part of being brilliant is to know the balance between financial growth and personal necessities. Building credit and wealth requires making responsible decisions. It requires you to know when it’s okay to spend extra money or go over a credit card limit for something that is a necessity. Or in other words, being cheap can save you money and make you financially wealthy, but being too cheap can kill you, and that would be the opposite of brilliant, which is stupid.

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Make sure you checkout our 9 Must Read Credit Guides

1. No Debt Needed Debt Reduction Guide
   Written by a person who successfully got out of debt, this guide is a great place to start. It gives elaborate steps on what you should do to get out of debt, covering everything from determining a debt reduction method to planning future savings.
2. The Only Credit Card Guide You’ll Ever Need
   This simple to follow, question and answer guide has vital information that you need to know. It covers everything from the basics about credit cards, finding the right credit card, and warnings you have to know.
3. “Good” Credit Debt – How – To Play the 0% APR Game
   Want to make money off of debt? This guide will show you are sneaky trick!
4. 15 Ways to Establish and Improve Your Credit History and FICO Score
   This is a must read guide on how to improve your credit. It contains information everyone should know.

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We recently researched some of the top savings accounts available today to find the one that provides the best APY and no hassle sign up. The top savings account we found is provided by Wilmington Trust, a highly recognized institution in the online savings industry. Their WTDirect Savings Account will not only increase your savings, but will also improve your credit score. Inside Secret: There is no minimum fee on the WTDirect account so you are not required to maintain a high account balance, just having one of these accounts opened can improve your credit score! Although we do suggest putting as much money into the savings account as possible, because helping you save your money and earn more interest is our ultimate goal.

Wilmington Trust is an online financial service offering an introductory APY (annual percentage yield) of 3.26% for 60 days. After 60 days your APY remains at 3.26% if your account balance is $10,000 or more. If your account balance is less than $10,000 the APY is be 0.50%, which is still great compared to other saving accounts! The APY for an average traditional bank account is 0.36%, lower than the APY offered by WTDirect. Since the WTDirect Savings Account is considered high-yield, it has a potential APY of over 5%.

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Life Takes Visa

Visa is a network that connects cardholders (everyday people, like you), financial institutions (banks, etc.) and merchants (stores, etc.). Visa is the operator of the world’s largest retail electronic payment network. Visa does not issue cards to cardholders, set cardholders’ fees, set cardholders’ interest rates or give loans to cardholders. These interactions are the responsibility of the financial institutions, which Visa is associated with. Visa makes money from financial institutions by charging fees based on payment volume, transactions processed and more.

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Upon recent request, here is even more information about credit score that will prove to be vital information for both amateur and rookie credit score holders.

As mentioned in the previous post, credit score ranges from 300 to 850, with 850 being the best. So what about everything else in the middle? Here is the breakdown of what’s good and what’s not.

850 – 650 Very Good! People with a credit score in this range have the most potential to obtain the loans and lines of credit with the lowest interest rates and highest credit limits.

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Having credit is a very important part of living in today’s society. The amount of credit you have represents how trustworthy and responsible you are when it comes to money. Your credit is measured using a credit score. Your credit score is checked every time you apply for a credit card, mortgage, buy a car or even apply to get your phone line installed. Checking your credit score is becoming more and more prevalent, because lenders and organizations are becoming more careful about whom they can trust giving credit to.

Your credit is dependent on the items listed below:

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Freecreditreport.com offers you a free Experian credit report and credit score as a part of their free 7 day trial when you sign up for their program. The program costs $11.95 per month if you sign up through us using the link below. Normally, it is $14.95 if you go directly to freecreditreport.com. With this service you get to view your credit report and credit score anytime you want and you are enrolled in credit alerts. This is an easy and cheap way to monitor and protect your credit and identity. For extra cost, freecreditreport.com offers extra services towards protecting you and your children.

Here are the step towards protecting your credit and identity.

1. Click here to sign up.
2. Fill in your personal information (Name, Address, etc.).
3. Press the “Get Yours Now” button.
4. Create a username and password, fill in your personal information and enter your credit card information on this page. Press the Submit Secure Order button when you are finished.
5. Answer the questions to verify your identity and press Continue.
6. You will receive a promotional add about one of freecreditreport.com’s additional services. You may choose to accept this service that adds additional fees, or click the “No, Thanks” button to continue.
7. You should now be on your credit report page.

If you are only on this site for the free credit report and score, you must cancel your account within 7 days by calling 1-888-829-6560. Inside Secret: If you call and try to cancel they will offer you a 50% discount on your membership! This may be a limited time offer but it is always worth a try.

Whether you are looking for a free credit report and score or a cheap and effective way to protect your identity and credit, freecreditreport.com is a great solution. Remember it is important to check your credit report often or have alerts sent to you when there are changes on it. This is the best way to help insure you are not a victim of identity theft. Freecreditreport.com offers a $50,000 guarantee against identity theft.

The most common identity theft is made by stealing your mail. Unsolicited credit offers from credit cards or loans contain personal information that makes it so easy for thieves to steal your identity. You can take measures to protect yourself by opting-out of Consumer Credit Reporting Companies so that you will not receive unsolicited mail.

Here is the quick, free and easy process to opt-out and protect yourself from identity theft.

1. Go to optoutprescreen.com
2. Click on the button at the bottom of the page, which says “Click Here to Opt-In or Opt-Out”.
3. Select the option “Electronically Opt-Out for Five Years” and press Submit.
4. You will be prompt to fill in your personal information. Note: your social security number and you date of birth are not required fields, so you do not have to provide them. However, providing it will help to ensure that your request is processed thoroughly.
5. Press the Confirm button when you are done.

This opt-out option is good for 5 years, and may take about 5 business days to process. You may still receive unsolicited credit offers in the mail until it is fully processed. Make sure you resubmit this request every 5 years or submit a mailed in request to permanently opt-out. If you decide that you want to receive unsolicited offers again, you are able to go on the site and opt-in.

For even more effective measures in making sure you are not a victim of identity theft, we recommend using Life Lock. Life Lock has superior functionality including its TrueAddress feature, which monitors your change of address for better protection. Life Lock also has a 1 million dollar guarantee against identity theft, along with an extensive list of features.

In order to protect your credit, we recommend that you set fraud alerts on your credit file. This is a very quick, free and easy process. Fraud alerts display on your credit file that you suspect you are a victim of fraud, heightening the level of security on it. Therefore, if someone tried to open a credit account in your name, increase the credit limit or obtain a new card on an existing account, the lender should make sure that you are the one who authorized the request.

Here are the quick, free and easy steps to help prevent credit fraud.

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According to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACT Act) you are entitled to one free credit report each year so you can monitor your credit and fight identity theft. Annualcreditreport.com was created by three credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, to fulfill this purpose. The steps below will walk you through obtaining your credit report for free. The process can be tricky, because each company likes to sell you promotions. This process can also be very lengthy and only gives you your credit report, not your credit score. So we recommend you use Identity Guard for a faster and more efficient means at obtaining both your credit report and credit score!

But if you must do it the hard way, here are the steps:

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Those Tricksters
Finance charges are the way credit card issuers make money off of you. The tricky thing is that there are so many methods for calculating how much money you owe. Some methods can save you money and others can have you left with an empty wallet.

For simplicity’s sake, finance charges can be viewed as being the same thing as your interest, since many credit cards these days are cutting back on the amount of fixed fees. Finance charges are the cost of using credit, which in actuality includes both interest and fees.

Since there are so many ways credit card issuers can calculate you finance charge, we well explain some of the basic ones here, ranging from methods that experts say can save you money to others that will have you paying more then you should.

Easy on your pocket. Adjustable balance is the most common sense method for calculating finance charges and is what experts consider the method for saving you money. To calculate the finance charge, credit issuers take the balance from the previous statement, add the new charges and fee, subtract the payment that you make, and then multiply that number by your interest rate for that period.

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There are so many types of credit cards; it’s easy to get confused.  That’s why we broke it down for you, plain and simple.  Here is what you should know about credit cards. 

Balance Transfer Credit Cards
Balance transfer credit cards are very popular.  They allow people to transfer a previous credit card balance onto them.  The interest rate for balance transfer credit cards normally start out very low or even at 0% APR introductory rate / teaser rate.  But the catch is that after a year or a few months, however long the introductory rate is stated to last, the APR increase to a normal rate, definitely higher than any introductory rate.  Balance transfer cards are considered unsecure cards, because you are not required to deposit money to demonstrate that you have money to pay your balance before using the card. 

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Credit Card APR
APR stands for annual percentage rate.  For credit cards, APR is usually the same thing as the normal interest rate.  This is because credit cards are cutting back on the amount of fees to attract people like you.  APR can be tricky, so keep reading to learn more!

About APR
APR represents the cost of having a balance on a loan or credit card for the duration of a year.  It includes fees and the cost paid to acquire the loan.  APR is used to standardize the way rate is expressed, so that it is easier for people to compare lenders and issuers.  The basic concept is that APR is a percentage of the amount you borrow that you must pay in addition to the amount you borrow.  For example, if your APR is 5% then you pay an additional $5 for every $100 you borrow each year.

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A credit score is a three digit number ranging from 300 to 850. This number is used to represent how good you are at paying your bills and the likelihood that you will pay back money that you borrow. The higher the number the better your credit score. There are different types of credit scores; the main one is called FICO score.

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Annual Fee
An annual fee is a yearly charge by a credit card company, typically ranging from $15 - $300.  However, to attract potential card holders, many credit cards do not have an annual free.

APR (Annual Percentage Rate)
APR represents the cost of having a balance on a loan for the duration of a year.  It includes fees and the cost paid to acquire the loan.  APR is used to standardize the way rate is expressed, so that is it easier for people to compare lenders and options.

APY (Annual Percentage Yield)
APY is the percentage of a bank account deposit which you are awarded for leaving your money in a bank account over a year of time.

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We Love Good Credit

The Credit Beacon was founded with one thing in mind, your credit.  We want to help you make informed decisions about your financial and credit needs.  We believe that having good credit is a vital asset to living life and we are here to help you achieve all you can imagine.

Our services are all free.  We don’t charge anything, not even a penny.  Unlike other sites, we are solely dedicated to helping you.  We provide you with advanced search tools to ensure that you find the best credit card offers, lenders and counselors.  We also give you access to industry facts and secrets.

The staff here at The Credit Beacon is proud to welcome you to your future of obtaining and retaining an excellent credit score!