Credit Cards For Less Than Perfect Credit

Almost half of college seniors graduating this year don’t have a credit card, according to a recent Capital One survey. That’s a steep increase compared to the 22 percent of graduates from 2008 to 2010 who also didnt have a card.

There are good reasons to not get a credit card while in college. Most students don’t have a lot of money and having easy access to credit makes it all too easy to accumulate excessive credit card debt. However, students who don’t get a card while in college might find it harder to qualify for the best credit cards once they graduate – particularly if they don’t yet have a job.

This was the case for Mary, a recent college graduate and current credit card novice. “My parents

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Dear Erica, I have a credit card judgment from 09 for $2,000. I do not work or have any assets of my own. Everything is in my husbands name: car, house and bank account. Since all the furniture was paid for by my husband, could a debt collector have a sheriff come for the furniture to pay on my debt? My husbands name was not on the judgment. We live in New Jersey. Mary

Dear Mary, So let me get this straight: You’ve been sued for a debt, you and your husband have some assets and you’re afraid that the company that won a monetary judgment might be able to collect what’s due. Before getting into the legality of what the judgment creditor can do to force the matter, I’d like to cover how you can pay. This wa

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A credit card that pays new cardholders $300 just for spending $1,500 within six months may sound like the credit card version of a Brooklyn Bridge fire sale, but think again.

Credit cards featuring lucrative cash bonus offers are becoming increasingly common, according to a new study by Mintel Comperemedia.

In the first four months of this year, a full 23 percent of credit card offers came with a cash bonus offer, the study found, compared to just 1 percent of offers in the same period of 2007. In addition, almost six out of ten credit card offers featured some kind of additional promotional offer, such as bonus points, gift cards, extra miles or cash-back rewards.

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Credit card language is scary for the first-time cardholders like me.

Principal? Fixed Rate of Interest? Default rate? Oh my!

Yet these mysterious terms can be mastered and the average young person, like myself, can become a king or queen of credit! Or at the very least, new-to-credit consumers and college students need to be responsible users of credit.

At first, I didn’t see the difference between a debit card and credit card. I mean, it seemed that the same machine swipes either debit or credit in stores. B

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