Word: credit-card
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PRICEY PLASTIC Cardholders, beware! Major credit-card issuers have raised their fees--again. It's all there in the fine print. It used to be a good deal to travel abroad with a credit card--when foreign-transaction fees were at 1%. Card issuers such as Chase Manhattan have raised them to 3%. Other fees, like cash-advance charges and balance-transfer fees, have risen for holders of Bank of America's and Citibank's cards. Don't forget to pay those bills on time. Late fees have leaped...
...these guys, and why are they jacking up the nation's rent, so to speak, by raising the cost of credit-card, car-loan, home-mortgage and other debt...
...money. Europeans are already using cell phones to make purchases from vending machines (the cost of the cigarettes or candy bar is automatically added to your account). That might come to America soon, but the industry is setting its sights even higher. Palm wants you eventually to store your credit-card numbers on your PDA and use it to make major purchases. It's working on a variety of techniques--including digital signatures and fingerprints--to establish that the person making the purchase is really...
...house hunting, carrying a lot of debt or underwater with recent stock-market losses, this is a painful shot of economic medicine. It means mortgage rates will be going higher, as will the rate on virtually all other new loans. Credit-card rates, already steep, will increase, and the floating-rate debt you already have will become more costly. These conditions are telling you to pay for more things with cash, pay down debt and--this really hurts--lower your expectations for investment returns...
...Other debt. Rethink all the ways you are using leverage, such as carrying credit-card debt while owning stocks or borrowing against your home to buy a boat. As rates go up, the investment or enjoyment return on whatever you purchased must go up commensurately for the arrangement to make sense. Dump as much debt as you can. If the economy tanks and your income goes down, high-rate credit-card debt, especially, can ruin you. Pay off high-rate non-tax-deductible debts first. If possible, consolidate your nondeductible debts--including auto loans--into a deductible home-equity loan...