-
Select the Card for You
Select by Type of Card:- Gas Rebate Credit Cards
- Airline Credit Cards
- Balance Transfer Cards
- Business Credit Cards
- Cash Back Credit Cards
- Instant Approval Cards
- Low Interest Credit Cards
- Prepaid & Debit Cards
- Reward Credit Cards
- Student Credit Cards
- Select by Credit History
- Select by Bank
- Friends
-
Recent Reviews
- How we pay with plastic will change Monday with new credit card rules
- Eliminating ‘He Said, She Said’ on Loan Modifications
- 10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You
- The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? – From Mint.com
- Credit card’s newest trick: 79.9 percent interest
- 42% of parents have paid a child’s debt
- More Homeowners Fall Behind on Mortgages
- Problem mortgages hit new high at 14 percent
- Google Tackles Mortgage Market With New Comparison Ads
- Latest bank fee is for paying off credit card on time every month
Top Rated Offers
Failed Bank List 2009
Read the list at Failure Magazine
___________
{Photography by locusolus}
Where Struggling Americans Can Find a Fresh Start
Looking to start over? Find a new job? A new house? Here are 20 U.S. markets where jobs are available and real estate is affordable
Thousands of Americans across the U.S. are wondering if they would be better off somewhere else. The question is where?
As unemployment and foreclosures continue to rise, stocks keep fluctuating, and cash-strapped state and city governments move to increase taxes and trim services, many people are finding that careers and communities they once believed secure are no longer dependable. Either they have lost jobs, are in fear of losing a job, are stuck paying more mortgage than their homes are currently worth, or have seen their family’s quality of life evaporate. For those troubled Americans who are willing to relocate, the U.S. can still be a land of opportunity.
No state is totally buffered from the downturn, but several have gotten a boost from energy, military, and agricultural sectors. The healthiest states include Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. In the Washington area, federal government and defense jobs have given the economy a boost. And Iowa, which has seen its economy somewhat deteriorate, has also benefited from agricultural and alternative-energy jobs. (Read more at: BusinessWeek)
___________
{Photography by Yamiq}
Trapped: It’s hard to get a job if your credit is bad
If you’re unemployed, falling behind on bills can make it tougher to find work
Dan Denton is stuck in a vicious cycle: He’s behind on his bills after losing his job. But lousy credit is spoiling his chances of finding new employment.
Recruiters from a St. Louis-based investment company recently rescinded an offer after looking at his credit history, which has been mauled by overdue card payments and an impending foreclosure on his Inland Empire house. He and his wife, Dana, filed for bankruptcy protection this month to try to hang on to their home. (Read more at: LA Times)
___________
{Photography by Egan Snow}
The 10 Hardest Jobs To Fill In America
If you’re looking for work in any of these fields, you’re in luck.
For the second year in a row, engineer is the hardest job to fill in America.
Why are engineers so hard to find? “We have whole generations of people loving liberal arts, not going into science and math,” says Larry Jacobson, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers.
Other professions on the staffing firm Manpower’s ( MAN – news – people ) list of the 10 hardest jobs to fill in the U.S.: information technology staffer, nurse, machinist and teacher. The survey of 2,019 employers was done in the first quarter of 2009. (Read more at: Forbes.com)
___________
{Photography by On 1st Site Still Too Busy}
The new ‘good’ job: 12 bucks an hour
In the Midwest, communities race to replace dwindling auto jobs with renewable energy ones, but workers will have to sacrifice on their pay.
Massive investment in renewable energy could ultimately create 4 million manufacturing jobs. But for the workers in the bottom rung of this movement, the shift to green jobs could very well mean a pay cut of nearly 60%, a trend spreading across the entire manufacturing sector.
Many of the entry-level jobs making green energy components start at $12 an hour, much less than the now extinct $28 an hour job that had allowed high school-educated workers in the auto sector to achieve middle class status.
“Particularly at the lower end, these are not very good jobs,” said Philip Mattera, research director at Good Jobs First, a labor-friendly research group, also acknowledging that the renewable energy sector paid wages that were “all over the map.”
Talkback: Is $12 an hour a decent wage?
Americans are betting that molding steel wind turbines, slicing silicon for solar panels and making batteries for electric cars will put them back on top of the manufacturing game. The 4 million new jobs, estimated by the University of California, Berkeley, would bring back more than half of all the manufacturing jobs lost in this country since the sector’s heyday in the late 1970s. (Read more at: CNNMoney.com)
___________
{Photography by ChiBart}
Promised Help Is Elusive for Some Homeowners
She had seen the advertisements for the new government program offering relief. She had heard President Obama promise that help was on the way for homeowners like her, people who had lost jobs and could no longer make their mortgage payments.
But when Eileen Ulery called her mortgage company — Countrywide, now part of Bank of America — the bank did not offer to alter her mortgage. Rather, the bank tried to sell her a new loan with a slightly lower monthly payment while asking her to pay $13,000 toward the principal and a fresh $5,000 in fees.
Her problem was that she did not yet present a big enough problem to merit aid.
Yes, she was teetering toward delinquency. She was among millions of homeowners rapidly sliding toward danger for whom the Obama administration had devised an aid program — some already in foreclosure proceedings, others headed that way as they ran out of means to make their payments. But unlike those in imminent peril of losing their homes, Ms. Ulery had never missed a payment.
“I don’t know who this bailout is helping,” she said. “We’ve given these banks all this money and they’re not doing what they say they’re doing. Something’s not working right. They keep saying they’re doing all this, but we don’t see it down here at this level.”
More than three months after the Obama administration outlined a new program aimed at rescuing millions of distressed homeowners by compensating banks that modify mortgages, Ms. Ulery’s experience illustrates the mixture of confusion, frustration and limited assistance that now reigns. (Read more at: NYTimes.com)
___________
{Photography by Respres}
Job Losses Push Safer Mortgages to Foreclosure
As job losses rise, growing numbers of American homeowners with once solid credit are falling behind on their mortgages, amplifying a wave of foreclosures.
In the latest phase of the nation’s real estate disaster, the locus of trouble has shifted from subprime loans — those extended to home buyers with troubled credit — to the far more numerous prime loans issued to those with decent financial histories.
With many economists anticipating that the unemployment rate will rise into the double digits from its current 8.9 percent, foreclosures are expected to accelerate. That could exacerbate bank losses, adding pressure to the financial system and the broader economy.
“We’re about to have a big problem,” said Morris A. Davis, a real estate expert at the University of Wisconsin. “Foreclosures were bad last year? It’s going to get worse.” (Read more at: NYTimes.com)
___________
{Photography by Ben+Sam}
Bubbles and crashes: does history repeat itself?
Knowledge vs. Action. Bookworms claim that knowledge is power, bullies state that action is power.
The smart people that we know have both: they take appropriate action with plenty of relevant knowledge; when it comes to personal finance and money in general that is the rule that we subscribe to, anything else is gambling.
There are some classic books that provide a wealth of information related to the cycles of the financial markets and economies, these are our favorites:
- THE GREAT CRASH 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith (1955)
- EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Charles Mackay (1841)
- THE GO-GO YEARS: THE DRAMA AND CRASHING FINALE OF WALL STREET’S BULLISH ‘60S by John Brooks (1973)
- BARBARIANS AT THE GATE: THE FALL OF RJR NABISCO by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (1990)
- CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND DEMOCRACY by Joseph A. Schumpeter (1942)
- THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY by John Maynard Keynes (1936)
- THE WEALTH OF NATIONS by Adam Smith (1776)
- DEN OF THIEVES by James Stewart (1991)
- LIAR’S POKER: RISING THROUGH THE WRECKAGE ON WALL STREET by Michael Lewis (1990)
- THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (2003)
- THE WAY WE LIVE NOW by Anthony Trollope (1875)
- THE ESSAYS OF WARREN BUFFETT: LESSONS FOR CORPORATE AMERICA by Warren Buffett (1997)
- FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS: THE HIDDEN ROLE OF CHANCE IN THE MARKETS AND IN LIFE by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2001)
- THE PRICE OF LOYALTY: GEORGE W. BUSH, THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THE EDUCATION OF PAUL O’NEILL by Ron Suskind (2004)
- THE PRINCE by Niccolò Machiavelli (1513)
- THE ART OF WAR by Sun Tzu (circa 500 B.C.)
- AGAINST THE GODS: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF RISK by Peter L. Bernstein (1996)
___________
Photo Credits: Jeff Kubina (cc)
|
|
