J.C.’s Money Blog

My book review of  Rich Dad Poor Dad was included in this week’s edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. Here are the other inclusions this week that I enjoyed reading:

 The most original -

• Lazy Man from Lazy Man and Money explains how to Hack Your Credit Score. This is a pretty clever way to boost your credit history. 

Other good ones-

• Deamiter from Handling Finances presents Cheaper Financing is a Funny Route to the American Dream, and says, “Mortgages have become universal in our culture, but what would happen if mortgages just disappeared?”  - Interesting thought experiment
• Steward from My Family’s Money thinks that Emergency Funds Are the Coolest, and says, “An article about why we have an emergency fund and how we decided on the amount of the fund.”
• Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck from Beyond Paycheck to Paycheck explains that Your problem isn’t Starbucks, and says, “Many financial experts feel that the problems of the world (and especially of young people) would instantly disappear if we could only get rid of our coffee shops. They’re wrong. . . but you’re still in control.”
• paidtwice from I’ve Paid For This Twice Already… asks How Small a Transaction Before Plastic Seems Absurd?.  I’m a big fan of running ALL possible expenditures through a credit card for the points (no, I don’t keep a balance).  There can be some issues with this though with small purchases.  Paidtwice goes through the scenario of when using a credit card is absurd.

This last post really annoyed me:

Ron Haynes from The Wisdom Journal writes about Another Way Credit Card Companies Will Stab You in the Back.

Here Ron is complaining that certain credit card companies won’t reduce their interest rates beyond a certain point for people in credit counseling.  I know its popular to hate credit card companies, but they are giving out unsecured credit, and that credit has a cost. Just because you suck at managing money doesn’t mean they should forgive you of the commitments you agreed to with them. People in credit counseling are at a high risk of declaring bankruptcy, so their debt is the highest risk to the credit card company and should therefore demand a high interest rate. While these credit card companies aren’t being particularly helpful, you can hardly declare their not relieving you of the commitments you don’t want to keep as “stabbing you in the back”.

It’s more like stabbing you in the front, after you agreed to it in writing.