Here’s a couple of credit card tips in this season of shopping.

Paying By Check Versus Paying By Card

Generally, paying by card is a better option than checks. Remember that checks can get stolen, washed and used by thieving individuals. Cards are safer on that end, not to mention that the US Fair Credit Billing Act gives cardholders plenty of protections.

Special Prices For Credit Card Purchases

More and more merchants are tacking on higher prices on credit card purchases compared to shopping with cash, as an incentive to spare the store of the extra trouble card purchases can be. Save for a handful of states, there’s no concrete law against.

Discover allows it with no problem except for the aforementioned states while Amex, Visa and Mastercard expressly forbid credit card surcharges. Even with most of the credit card companies officially frowning on the practice, though, merchants continue to get away with it.

Instead of announcing the price difference as a surcharge, retail stores will often point to it as a discount for cash purchases. This means that while they cannot “charge you a premium” for swiping for a sale, they can “give you a discount” for paying in cash. It effectively works the same way but gets around the policies of the credit card companies.

Is it legal? Yes. Is it fair? Well, when has fair ever been an issue when it comes to siphoning your money away?

You already that you can find plenty of credit card deals online. In fact, you can find many of them on this site. Not only can you learn about them from the web, you can even apply for them online and have them mailed to you the very same day. Even better, you can take care of all your credit card business online, including bills, payments, customer service and more.

Online credit card services are usually free and they can be very helpful to cardholders. You can check your most recent statements without waiting for the mail, update personal information like addresses and phone numbers and even download items that can help you for tax purposes.

Important Things To Know

While it is certainly more convenient to pay for your credit card bills online, they usually take longer to post than conventional payment methods. If you like to wait until the last minute to make your payments, you can end up being charged late fees.

Make sure that your credit card company’s web site is secure. The last thing you need is an unsafe site where your personal and financial records are all easily accessible with the click of a mouse. All sites with security in place will normally have it written somewhere prominent - make sure to check.

If you decide to go totally paperless (receiving no offline billing statements, for instance), keep in mind that paper records can come in handy when you get into a dispute with your credit card company.

It sounds like a misnomer, right? Fixed interest is supposed to be fixed, so why would it rise?

Regardless of what you’ve been told by the credit card agent who sold you into applying or what the advertisement said, credit card companies can raise the APR on your fixed-rate credit card according to their discretion. Even if they sold you with a bolded “Fixed Rate For Life” on the flyer, don’t believe it for a second. The lender always reserves the right to update your interest rates - check the terms, it’s true.

While variable-rate credit cards can see their interest rates fluctuate with no word to the consumer, fixed-rate credit cards are required to provide you with a written notice 15 days before the change. That, pretty, much is all that really sets them apart.

With that settled, certain things can prompt credit card companies to suddenly raise your interest rates. A series of late payments, sudden balance increase and going over your credit limit can not only stifle your credit power but similarly prompt your credit card company to pad your interest rates.

If you own multiple credit cards and exhibit any of the above behaviors with one of them while taking proper care of your obligations with the others, don’t be surprised if you find an APR increase across all of your cards. Lenders often apply a universal default clause to your account if they find that you are delinquent with at least one credit card in your name, effectively allowing them to raise their rates.

The universal default clause can really dig you in a hole, essentially giving credit companies to kill off your current rates without due case. To avoid it, you can try shopping for a new fixed-rate card that comes without the universal default clause. It may not be easy to find them but there’s probably one there somewhere among the pile.

Many credit cards offer perks designed for specific lifestyles. For frequent travelers, for instance, you can find various flavors of credit cards with offers such as free miles, airline discounts and international assistance. For students, there are cards that offer substantial discounts on college expenses and school supplies. While cards with perks designed for your needs can be attractive, they often come with strings attached.

Appealing features and perks on credit cards are often offset by high interest rates and steep annual fees. In addition, various charges not found on regular credit cards are usually tacked on to it.

If you’re considering getting one of these value-added plastics with specialized rewards packages, make sure that at the least:

• You’re going to take advantage of the perks more than once a year
• You’re not going to keep a large balance on the card

If you’re only going to take advantage of special offers like airline discounts once or twice every year, it might make sense to compare the potential savings to the extra fees you’re going to be billed with. Chances are, the savings won’t even match up to the additional cost it will take out of you.

Similarly, if you’re going to keep a large balance on the card, special rewards cards can prove particularly expensive. With higher interest rates and additional charges, you’re likely to end up losing more money over the long term than if you stuck with a standard, lower-rate credit card

If you frequently fly with Continental Airlines, the Chase Continental Airlines World Mastercard can prove an indispensable tool in your wallet. It offers possibly the best miles package available for Continental, allowing you to earn double miles on purchases made with the airline and single miles for regular purchases.

A second alternative is the Chase Flexible Rewards card. This credit card lets you earn one reward point for every dollar you use up, which you can then exchange specifically for Continental OnePass miles. Exchange rate is 1:1.2, allowing you to convert 10,000 rewards points into 12,000 miles - a great deal considering that the Continental Airlines World Mastercard only allows you to earn a single mile for every non-airline purchase.

Which One’s Better?

The better choice for you will depend on a couple of things, namely:

• How often you expect to make purchases with Continental Airlines, and
• How often you will use the card for other purchases

If you’re going to shop frequently with Continental, the World Mastercard will earn you double points on those purchases, making it a great value for you. Unless you will, however, the Flexible Rewards card from Chase makes better sense. It will earn you the same points on both Continental sales and regular purchases but the each point can be exchanged for a better rate than 1 is to 1.

Additionally, the Chase Continental Airlines World Mastercard comes with an $85 annual fee (and no, Chase won’t wave it without a special condition) while the Flexible Rewards comes with no annual charges.

The road to a life with credit cards has always been paved with good intentions. Every year, people send in a credit card application with every resolve to handle it responsibly. Most of them don’t.

In fact, people promise so many things to themselves that it can be pretty funny to record them saying it and then look at their credit card history just a few short years later. What kinds of things do you usually hear? How about…

• I’ll pay all my credit in full each month
• I’ll get my card to zero balance before the teaser rate ends
• I’ll only use it for emergencies
• I won’t even use half of my credit limit
• I’ll only use it to pay for important items
• I’m never gonna use it for cash advances

As you can see, intent and behavior doesn’t always match. What about you? What kinds of promises that you’ll find hard to keep are you telling yourself?

Before getting your credit card, it’s important to be realistic about your financial capabilities. For instance, assuming you get into debt, how much can you afford to pay each month to cut it down? If you’re really serious about paying your credit in full month-to-month then it makes sense not to use your credit card for purchases above that amount. It’s one thing to have good intentions - it’s another to have the capability to actually make it happen.

Make sure you learn about the interest rate, annual fees and other key numbers as those things will have a bearing as to how much debt you’ll end up accruing. Get real for the meantime and save the “I’m-a-stand-up-kinda-guy” talk when you’re trying to impress employers into hiring you. A credit card may be more trouble than you bargained for if you don’t anticipate potential troubles and prepare yourself for them.

In the first and second installments of this series, we gave you four things you need to consider when taking advantage of low-interest and no-interest balance transfers on credit cards. To conclude the series, we give you two last tips to help you get the most out of transferring your credit card balance.

Check If You Really Got The Advertised Rates

You see a credit card advertising zero-interest balance transfers and you send in an application.  Once approved, you’ll finally get to enjoy zero interest on floating credit you’ve been paying 16% markups on for the last year.  Time to rejoice, right?

Not yet.  Before you approve the transfer, make sure to read the terms sent and call your credit card issuer to verify if you’ve been assigned the rate as advertised.  Credit card companies will sometimes approve you and issue you a card but assign you a higher rate, especially if your credit rating isn’t very high.

A lot of people approve balance transfers without realizing this and later on complain once they get their first statements.

Late Penalties

The moment you transfer a balance for the purpose of lower rates, bear in mind that it is usually subject to certain conditions.  One of those conditions is timely payments.

The moment you’re even a day late settling your bills, the credit card will convert to a higher rate, usually the standard interest charges.  If you pay it late one more time, you can get see your interest rates hike to as high as 30 percent!

It bears repeating to yourself over and over: once you do balance transfers, always pay on time.

In the first installment of this series, we gave you two things you need to consider when taking advantage of low-interest and no-interest balance transfers on credit cards. There are more things to be wary of - read on.

Applying The Low Interest Rates Only On New Purchases

Not all balance transfer credit cards are the same.  While most will apply the lowered rates only on balance transfers, quite a few will go the opposite way.  They will keep the usual interest rates on the transferred amount but offer very attractive rates on new purchases for a specific length of time (typically 6 or 9 months).  If you don’t realize this before signing up for the card, you’ll end up paying full interest plus the accompanying transfer charges - something that can leave you losing money in the end.

Watch Out For Hefty Fees

Most cards typically charge a 4% rate on all balance transfers, with some setting a maximum cap at $25 or $50.  Make sure to check whether the credit card company is capping their balance transfer fees or not before deciding to take advantage of such an offer.

If you have a considerable amount of debt, you could be paying high premium for it.  Transferring a $4000 debt, for instance, will get you close to $200 in fees.  Even worse, a few of these cards will tack the charges as part of your new balance.  If possible, only do balance transfers on cards which put a cap on their fees.

Transferring your balance from a high-interest credit card to another one that offers better interest rates can save you thousands of dollars over the lifetime of the money you owe.  Plenty of cards offer really low rates with some even giving you a zero-percent rate on balance transfers.  While doing a balance transfer is usually good, it can cause a bit of trouble if you don’t take careful watch of you’re getting into.

Some Credit Cards Have A Time Limit On Balance Transfer Interest Rates

Most cards only offer the low or zero interest on the transferred amount for a certain time, like six months to a year.  If part of the balance remains after the set period, you’re going to end up paying interest in full.  If the updated rate will be lower or the same as your current credit card, it may be okay.  If it’s considerably higher though, you might want to give it some more thought.

Using The New Credit Card For New Purchases

Majority of cards will give you the low interest rates for the transferred balance only while charging even higher rates for new charges to the card.  Not a problem, right?  It’s still a good deal that allows you a lot of savings for the current balance you’ve incurred with your current credit card.

When you transfer a large balance onto a new card, however, using it to make new purchases can lead to very high interest payments later on.  Any payments you make to the new credit card will usually be charged to the old balance, which means all your recent purchases will continually pile up interest until the transferred amount is cleared.  That can mean a considerable amount of interest payments tack on that you’ll be forking up money for in the long run.

The annual fee is a charge that the card issuer bills to your account annually, usually on your membership anniversary date.  Most regular credit cards will have fees in the $18 to $20 range while premium cards (gold and special rewards) can go from between $35 and $50.  Some cards with a great rewards package charge as much as $100 in annual fee as does many credit cards intended for customers with bad credit.  Make sure to check the annual fee for a particular credit card before applying.

Fees are usually free on the first year to entice you to sign up.  Once the fee is charged in the next year,  you usually barely even notice.

Some credit cards will offer to give you a card with no annual fees for certain conditions.  For instance, some cards will waive the fee for life if you transfer a balance of 1000 or more from another credit card.  If the issuer promises to waive your annual fee for life, make sure to check your bills anyway.  You never know when an accidental billing can occur.

Credit cards with rewards programs sometimes allow members to pay the annual fee using some of the accumulated rewards points.  Check with your credit card and make sure to inform them that you want this done once your anniversary date is near.

Many customers get their annual fees waived by threatening to cancel the card if the issuer insists on charging it.  If you do this, make sure to call before the fee is charged to your statement not after - it’s usually harder to get it waived when it’s already reflected on your bill.  In some cases, the issuer will send you a gift certificate instead that’s equal to the amount charged for the annual fee to entice you to keep the credit card.