There are two important timeframes that you must be aware of before you make a credit card payment online or call in to your credit card company to make a credit card payment over the phone. Both timeframes revolve around when your credit card company posts your credit card payment to your account.

Unfortunately, these two timeframes do not seem to be clearly understood and, as a result, they cause credit card holders a lot of headaches. Customers have endless problems in these two areas:

• posting payments in time to prevent past due charges
• posting payments to have more available credit

Due to these misunderstandings, many customers accrue late charges and find themselves without available credit when they need it, despite having made their payments.

To understand how this happens and how to eliminate these headaches, you must first understand [Read more →]

In this town hall meeting on UStream, Barack Obama says that a student with a student loan today finds that the interest rate on that loan keeps being raised “just like a credit card.” As a result, people are finding themselves in “a spiral of debt.” 

Barack Obama Town Hall Meeting On UStreamTV

The problem, of course, is because the low-interest Direct Student Loan program (under which I borrowed and repaid my school loan money) has been replaced, under this administration, with private lenders. The result has been a world of hurt, especially since the cost of attending community college has risen 40% in the last five years.

Millions of young Americans who should go to college to meet our worker needs (as well as their own economic needs) are unable to do so. Plus the big banks – all of whom issue credit cards and receive government subsidies (remember that when you make your credit card payment) – have withdrawn from making loans for 2-year degrees, thus undercutting the backbone of the American workforce.

This will add to our shortage of nurses, firefighters, farmers and other skilled laborers. Plus 80% of America’s fastest-growing jobs require at least a 2-year degree. 

The result is that smart young men and women will get stuck in low-paying jobs – if they can find jobs – and will struggle just to live. They will – no doubt – be targeted for credit card offers and [Read more →]