Visa Black Card for When Gold Just Won’t Do

There is a new elite credit card out on the market. This time it isn’t American Express that is offering it. Barclays Bank Delaware in partnership with VISA are offering what they are calling the Visa Black Card. These elite types of credit cards go the extra mile for those that are willing to pay for it.

They claim on the card details page that this card “is available to only 1% of U.S. Residents to ensure the highest caliber of personal service is provided to every Cardmember”. It doesn’t really explain what credit score or annual household income you need to qualify, but I am assuming that if they are only issuing this card to 1% of the US it must be a very high number.

Some of the perks of the card include:

• Limited Membership
• 24-Hour Concierge Service
• Rewards Program – 1% cash back on all purchases
• Luxury Gifts
• Access to more than 500 airport lounges in over 90 countries worldwide

The concierge service, which looks pretty interesting, offers the following services:

• Entertainment Planning – information and reservations for restaurants, health clubs, sproting events and golf tee times
• Business Services – conference and translation services, message services and computer, A/V rentals
• Travel Information & Assistance – hotel, fliight mass transit, car rental info and reservations. ATM and weathe information
• Country & City Information – sights/entertainment, tourist and shopping info
• Gift Arrangements (The one I would use the most) -Gift baskets, Floral arrangements, Specific gifts (as requested), Special occasion gift recommendations
• Specialty Services – Assistance with location and purchase of specialty items.

All of these features come at a price, however, in the form of a $495 annual fee. The card design is pleasing to the eye especially when compared to my current cards that are in my wallet. If I had $495 a year to drop on this for the annual fee I would definetly sign up for this as some of the concierge services would come in handy since I travel quite a bit for my job. These elite cards are not for everyone, but if you have the cash, the VISA Black Card is definetly worth a look.

Advanta Mastercard 90 Days No Interest Forever

Advanta has come out with an interesting new Net 90 Mastercard which defers the interest for 90 days on charges. This is not an introductory offer and applies to all purchases.

To put this in perspective most cards give you 30 days from the beginning of the statement until you need to pay for the charges you make. Having 60 more days with no interest makes things interesting since you can float all those charges and earn interest on that money by putting it in a high yield savings account rather than having to pay the bill each month.

If you get on a cycle of paying for your charges 90 days later, each month you are floating 2 months worth of charges. You could potentially save quite a bit of money in interest by doing that. Just to make sure you track your purchase and when they need to be paid off! You don’t want to get caught in a rut of paying interest every month.

Some other benefits other than the 90 days no interest are a cash back rewards program as well as no annual fee.

This is a business card, but you can apply as an individual. See the application page for more details.

Use Those Old Credit Cards!

Your credit score is basically your financial resume. It is what could save you thousands of dollars in interest by getting you the best rates based on your financial history. One factor that affects your credit score is the average length of your credit history. This is generated by looking at your earliest credit account.

We are all told to keep those old credit accounts open so your average is higher. You will receive better interest rates if your average credit account is 10 years old, for example, versus a new account you just opened. Previously you could just cut the card up and leave that account dormant forever. However these days, due to the current economic conditions, banks are going through their accounts and closing ones that have been dormant. There is no formula to how they are doing this, but I have heard reports of banks closing credit cards for accounts that haven’t been used for over a year. Some others have reported that banks where they have 2 or more cards are closing one of the cards. Credit card companies have every right to close your account, but they usually do so without any warning to you. By the time you find out what happened, it is too late.

If you want to avoid an account closure for those cards that are extending the length of your credit history, I would reccommend using the card at least once every 6 months. Just use it at the store for something small or buy a tank of gas then pay it off right away. Some people might say once a year is good enough, but these days banks are scrambling to get an accurate picture of their bottom lines, so closing rarely used accounts is one way to put their arms around their total liability.

Fidelity Cash Back Visa Review

If you are looking for a cash back credit card that doesn’t have tiers or offeres different percentages on different days, then take a look at the

Fidelity Investments Rewards Visa Signature Card with WorldPoints Rewards. The Fidelity Visa card earns a flat 1.5% cash back on all purchases.

How it works is that the card earns points based on purchases. You get one point per dollar. But when you redeeem the points to your Fidelity Account, you get $75 for 5000 points which equates to a 1.5% cash back return.

Don’t have a Fidelity account, Here is a way to get $100 when opening one. The basic Fidelity account is free and there are no fees. When you have accumulated 5000 points in your account, you can select the “Investment Rewards” option, enter your Fidelity Account number, and then in 5 days the $75 will be transfered into your account. At this point you can either transfer it to your bank account, invest it, or put it wherever you want. You can use the money immediately.

If you don’t want a Fidleity account then you can redeem the points for other rewards based on the World Perks rewards program. The rewards are unlimited, unlike other cards that cap your rewards at a certain amount per year.

I currently use my American Express Blue Cash Card for all my purchases, but when they don’t take American Express I use the Fidelity Visa card. They have a easy to use online interface to pay bills and review charges. Another cool feature that they have is that they show you pending charges as soon as your card it swiped. So you can see up to the minute activity on your card. Most credit cards only show posted charges which can ususally appear 2-3 days after you used the card.

This card, like most today, has no annual fee or random charges. If you are looking for a constant decent cash back rate and no limits, Apply for the Fidelity Rewards Visa!

Balance Transfer for Life, is it worth it?

EDIT:  Please note that the Advanta Balance Transfer For Life Offer is no longer available. You might like the Advanta Mastercard that offers no interst for 90 Days every month!

A new popluar tool that credit card companies are using to get your business is to offer something called a Balance Transfer For Life. A Balance Transfer For Life is simply what it sounds like, a credit card transfer at a particular rate for the life of that balance. Sounds like a great idea right? Well lets drill into the details before we make that assumption.

First lets talk about the popular Discover 0% balance transfer for life offer. This one seems good enough, transfer over a balance and have 0% on it until it is paid off. But one you dive into the fine print you see that you need to make a minimum of 2 purchases using the card each month to keep the 0% rate on that balance transfer. Here is how Discover will make money on this balance transfer. Once you start using this card for charges, those charges will earn interest at the normal card rate, which usually is somewhere in the 10% – 18% APR range. So when you make payments to the card each month, those payments go toward the balance transfer first, so those purchase will keep accruing interest until you pay of the balance transfer. So over time if you use the card for a lot of high dollar purchases, the interest will keep accruing to your account. This may or may not be a good deal for you based on the amount of money to be balance transfered.

Next lets take a look at the Balance Transfer For Life offer from Advanta Mastercard. Advanta is offering a rate of 2.99% for the life of the balance. When you drill down into the Terms and Conditions there are no added requirements to keep the 2.99% for the life of the balance. Sure 2.99% is higher than the 0% offered by discover, but without the added pressure of having purchases stacked up behind the balance transfer you will save more money in the long run.

If you are trying to consolidate or reduce some debt, a balance transfer for life can be a great tool to help you. You do need to pay attention to the terms to make sure that the deal doesn’t actually end up costing you more money. If you decide to do a balance transfer for life, I would reccomend the Advanta Life-of-Balance Platinum Card with its 2.99% balance transfer for life option.

If anyone has come across any other balance transfer for life offers, please leave a comment here so that I can review them and add them to this post.

Chase Identity Protection Review

I was asked to do a review of Chase’s Identity Protection offering by a reader Toby. Since Chase offers a 30 day free trial, I signed up about a month ago and wanted to do a quick review on it.

For just under $12 a month you get unlimited access to your credit scores and reports from all 3 bureaus. They also montior changes to your credit file daily. There is also a $100,000 fraud expense reimbursement if you ever become a victim of identity fraud. If that does happen you receive access to a personal fraud specialist to work with to solve any issues.

What is important to me is the real time monitoring of my credit data. Don’t get me wrong, free credit reports are great, but by the time you check a report the damage could already have been done. With Chase, they sent me an email the day I opened a new credit card account letting me know that a new account was opened in my name. What was cool was that I could dispute the alert right there if I had not opened the account that I received the alert for. Most other identity protection sites tell you to call the credit bureau and don’t want to help you out.

I was able to pull my credit reports multiple times without issue. The site also does a very good job of explaining to you how your credit score is compiled and what things you can do over time to improve it. Obviously I wasn’t a victim of fraud within the first 30 days I tried it so I can’t comment on the persoal fraud assistant, but overall I was happy with the service that they provide. I decided to keep the Chase Identity Protection and cancel the service I had from Experian. For the money Chase offers me more features and fraud services, should I need them.

If you currently don’t have any fraud protection offering, I would suggest that check out Chase’s Identity Protection. Or at least just try it free for 30 days to see if it is something you may find useful.

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