Even if you make no changes in how you use credit, your credit score could change for the worse in the near future, according to a story on MarketWatch.com. The issue is that credit card companies are lowering some people's credit limits because more people are falling behind on their payments. With a lower credit limit, charging as much as you usually charge will mean that you're using more of your available credit. That worsens your "credit utilization" ratio, which can hurt your score. The lesson? Pay attention to your credit limit and try to use no more than 30 percent, preferably less than 10 percent. That advice holds true even if you pay your balance in full each month.
Matt's View
Credit scores have become increasingly important, with everyone from prospective employers to insurance companies using the scores to help decide who to hire and how much to charge. That means we all need to be credit score smart. The myFICO web site
has helpful guidance about how credit scores work.
As I've mentioned before, everyone should get his or her free credit reports via Annualcreditreport.com
. You're entitled to one free report per year from each of the three credit bureaus. Check your report for errors and unfamiliar lines of credit, which could be a sign of identity theft. If you'd like to know your credit score, buy it from Equifax while ordering your credit report. It's the only one of the three bureaus that offers the commonly used FICO credit score. It should cost less than $20.
An estimated 12 million people are still paying off debts they racked up buying holiday gifts last year. That's among the more sobering findings from a new holiday survey conducted by Consumer Reports. The lingering debts may be one reason why nearly 60 percent of people plan to use a gift budget this year--a much higher number than last year.
Matt's View
You can download a simple gift budget form for free from my web site
. There's still time to get some value from a gift budget this year, but the real value comes in setting an annual gift budget at the beginning of a year and then automatically transferring one-twelfth of the total into a separate savings account each month. When it's time to buy a gift, you just transfer the amount back to checking. That's one of the best ways I know of for not going into debt over the holidays.
If you have a child on your gift list this year, buy them something that doesn't require batteries. Such gifts usually require more imagination on the child's part and less ongoing cost for the child's parents.
Also, do as much of your shopping as possible online. Whenever I'm shopping online I open three Internet windows--one for a price comparison site like PriceGrabber.com
, one for a coupon code site like RetailMeNot.com
, and one for rebate site like Ebates
. Once I find out which store has the lowest price for the item I'm shopping for, I look for a coupon code on RetailMeNot.com and a rebate from Ebates, going with whichever one offers the best deal.
Matt's View
Another holiday suggestion is to build traditions. One tradition we've established with our kids is to read an Advent book together one page at a time in the weeks leading up to Christmas. They look forward to reading the book because each night's reading has a door that they open, which tells them more of the story of Christ's birth. But you don't need to buy a book to foster this tradition. This article
from Focus on the Family provides all the guidance you need to celebrate Advent. The article was written a number of years ago, so you'll want to note that Advent begins on November 30th this year, not December 3rd.
Suggesting ways to save money is the core mission of most personal finance writers. Now a personal finance blogger has compiled over 1,000 of the best money-saving ideas
from across the blogosphere, all linked to their original sources.
Matt's View
With a list this large there are bound to be some obvious ideas ("bring your lunch to work"), some unrealistic ones ("never eat out"), some odd ones ("if your kids complain about generic cereal, put it in a brand name box"), and some that don't pertain to most people ("don't install a pool"). But anyone interested in spending smarter will find plenty of solid money saving ideas on the list.
