Do you have a love or hate relationship with your credit card? Credit cards are quite personal and we all have a certain relationship with them. Your relationship with your credit card should be a pleasant one and it should be a two-way street. When used responsibly, your card should return the favor with perks and rewards. Just like any personal relationship, you should be happy with your current credit card and avoid those that may be one-sided. If you don’t feel a sense of attachment to your card, it may be time to find a new one…
Why You Should Love Your Credit Card
The year 2013 offered several alarming reminders of how easy identity theft can be. Two national chain stores, Target and luxury retailer Neiman Marcus, saw their credit card networks suffer significant data breaches during the holiday season. The breaches affected 110 million Target customers and 1.1 million Neiman Marcus customers, all of whom had their information – including credit card numbers, PIN numbers, addresses, phone numbers and names – stolen.
Javelin Strategy, a consulting and research firm focused on the payments and financial services industries, reports that one out of every three data breach victims becomes a victim of identity fraud, up from one in four in 2012. The same report indicates that in 2013, there were 500,000 more identity fraud victims than during the previous year.
These latest big brand security breaches are important reminders that it is not always possible to keep your information safe from thieves. However, there are a number of measures you can take to make it more difficult for high tech criminals to steal your personal information.
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You had every intention of paying off your credit card. Then life happened. You got laid off. Your kid had to have an emergency tonsillectomy. Your car broke down and needed a major overhaul. Now you can’t pay your credit card bill, but you don’t want it to go to collections. What do you do? Don’t worry, you still have several options to keep your credit report looking tidy.
Here Are Five Ways To Avoid Credit Card Collections:
1. Make a Call
There are a lot of times when a people sit on their hands instead of taking action. This shouldn’t be one of those times. As soon as you realize you’re going to be late with your payment, call your credit card company.
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All business start-ups will require some amount of capital to cover such things as electronic equipment, furniture and marketing materials. You can draw on your personal savings and loans from friends and family, but if that isn’t enough to get your business off the ground, credit cards may prove to be a useful means to obtain financing. Before accumulating credit card debt, it’s important to review some pros and cons, so let’s begin!
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For the most part, when people turn 18 years of age, they begin to receive their first credit card offers in the mail. Occasionally the type of offers being received are ever-so-slightly out of the ordinary, whereby the offer arrives for a member of the family who is far too young, or for family members who are not even human.
Here are some examples of cases where credit card offers are verging on the outlandish.
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You may have seen those ads on TV – the ones where the suspicious-looking character with the hand-held device sneaks past the unsuspecting pedestrian. In just the blink of an eye — voila! The victim’s complete credit card information has been stolen by the sneaky, device-wielding thief.
Unfortunately, this isn’t merely a worst-case scenario dreamed up by an over-imaginative marketing department; it’s urban fact. Thanks to modern technology, a criminal can steal your identity by simply walking past you and recording your credit card information, using a hand-held electronic card reader that anyone can purchase for less than $100. This device has the capability to instantly skim information from the radio frequency identity (RFID) chip imbedded in your credit cards. Your credit card information will then be displayed on a computer that’s equipped with a magnetic strip-writing device, which can be used to counterfeit a new card.
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