March 2012

Which FICO Scores Do Mortgage Lenders Use?

March 14, 2012

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been on a refinancing binge. My wife and I have refinanced our home twice in the last 12 months, and my business partner and I are doing the same with three rental properties. With mortgage rates at an all time low, these deals were just too good to pass up. [...]

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How Much Car Can You Afford?

March 12, 2012
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Photo: Toyota Motor Europe I‘ve been talking to my children about finances a lot lately. As they near high school graduation (one senior, one junior), I grow more and more concerned about their ability to handle money. And last week the talk centered around how much you should spend on a car. Why am I [...]

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List of Prepaid Credit Cards That Build Credit

March 10, 2012

In response to an article about free and low cost prepaid cards, a reader asked about building credit with a prepaid credit card: Is using a Prepaid Credit Card a way to build a credit history for someone who doesn’t have one? This is a great question, and underscores how confusing the different types of [...]

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American Express + Twitter = Savings

March 9, 2012

There’s two ways to spend less money–the easy way and the hard way. The hard way involves cutting back on everything from eating out to buying clothes to taking vacations. The easy way to spend less involves making smart changes that don’t affect your lifestyle, such as refinancing debt to lower rates or comparison shopping [...]

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6 Ways to Get Your Tax Refund Fast

March 8, 2012

Back in the day, I vividly recall running to the mail box to look for our tax refund. It was as if I’d found free money, even though I knew of course that it was just the IRS returning my own money to me. Still, tax refund day made me feel like I had won [...]

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Green Dot® Prepaid MasterCard® Review

March 7, 2012

The Green Dot® Gold Prepaid Visa® or MasterCard® is arguably the most widely used prepaid card today. You’ve likely seen the Green Dot card for sale at pharmacies, grocery stores, and even Walmart. The Green Dot® Prepaid MasterCard® is offered by Green Dot, a publicly traded company (NYSE:GDOT), and it sells about 1.5 million new [...]

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Your Mortgage Statements May Be Changing

March 6, 2012

Our mortgage statements might soon be changing because of a recent proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The mission of CFPB is to ensure consumers receive the appropriate information so they can fully understand their agreements with financial companies. In an effort to fulfill their mission, the CFPB is proposing that our mortgage statements [...]

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7 Ways To Your Pay Bills Online for Free

March 5, 2012
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Photo: kizzzbeth When I was in law school, my wife paid the bills. It was a depressing undertaking because we had more bills than money to pay them. After I graduated, my wife decided she had had enough and passed the torch to me. So for the last 20 years or so, I’ve been paying [...]

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FICO vs. FAKO–Does it Matter?

March 1, 2012

Recently a number of readers have dismissed free credit score services like Quizzle and Credit Sesame, noting that these services don’t provide you with your “official” FICO score. The argument goes like this. These FAKO scores, as they’re called, don’t show you the actual credit score that lenders will use. Therefore, the scores are worthless. [...]

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