Personal Finance Advice

Get Charged A Fee For Having A Credit: I just had to shake my head when I read this one – credit card companies are beginning to charge a fee if you have a credit on your credit card. Yes, you read that correctly. If you pay too much and have a credit, you can get charged a fee. While this report comes from the UK, it’s a US credit card company that is doing it. Don’t be surprised to see it here soon…

Oprah’s Ugly Secret: You’ve probably at least heard “The Secret” mentioned even if you aren’t sure what it is. Salon put together a rather scathing article about it which I tend to agree with. The affirmations aren’t bad in themselves, but not a very good way to go about financial planning relying solely on that without any other plan to get your finances in order:

The main idea of “The Secret” is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it — and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it — the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme — is brilliant. But what really makes “The Secret” more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn’t just endorsed “The Secret”; she’s championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame.

Ten Tweaks To A Daily Routine: Simple Dollar explains 10 tweaks to his daily routine to begin saving money. I have found that routine is one of the biggest ways to waste money that is out there – you get into a habit and continue it without even giving it a second thought. And those little things add up – like how I was able to save $1000 a year when I stopped drinking soda.