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.

Use Virtual Account Numbers to Fight Fraud

Not many people realize that their credit card may offer a good type of fraud protection called Virtual Account Numbers. Virtual Account numbers are a one time use number that points back to your main credit card number. The main use of this is when buying things over the Internet. When you check out, you use a virtual card number which can only be used once. So not only are you not giving out your real credit card number, you are also giving out a number that can be used once for charges. Once the charge hits your credit card company, that same number can never be used again, except to issue a credit if you needed to return the item.

Many credit companies claim that you are not held liable for unauthorized charges to your account so many people don’t bother using Virtual Account Numbers. But if your card number was lost or stolen and you are issued a new number then you have to update that new number with every merchant that may have it stored. Using Virtual Account Numbers you can only give out your real credit card number to trusted merchants and give other not so trusted merchants a virtual account number. This way you have the security of knowing that even if someone did get that virtual account number they couldn’t do anything with it.

Some banks like Bank Of America have sophisticated virtual account number programs where you can get numbers that can be used multiple times for recurring purchases. Other banks like Citibank have a more basic program where you can get a number for a one time use.

I use a virtual account number for all my online purchases. With the way credit departments are getting hacked into, I think this provides me a little more security to not having my main credit card number exposed to possible fraud.

Here are the banks that I know of that have some type of Virtual Account Number feature:
Bank of America / FIA Card Services – ShopSafe Numbers
Citibank – Virtual Account Numbers
Discover – Secure Online Account Numbers

Banks I know that do not have some type of Virtual Account Number feature:
America Express (They used to have one but stopped it 2 years ago)
Chase
HSBC

Please leave a comment if you know of other banks that provide this valuable service.

Credit Cards For the Fairer Sex

Ladies, do you need a new credit card but am not sure where to turn? Well a new site as popped up called The Credit Room that is designed especially for you. With eye pleasing colors and an easier way of categorizing the cards, it is definitely worth a look. The site also explains some common credit card dangers to avoid. So it might be helpful to some of you out here.

In my opinion, when dealing with credit cards always remember the following:

• Never get a credit card with an annual fee
• Never pay a credit card sign up fee
• Always beware of the interest rate
• Keep an eye on Balance transfer fees if you choose to do a balance transfer
• Make sure to pay at least the minimum payment amount on time or you risk your interest rate increasing

Getting a credit card is easy these days, just make sure you fully understand the terms and conditions prior to signing up and using the card.

4.25% Auto Loans from Pentagon Federal Credit Union

Pentagon Federal Credit Union is offering 4.25% Auto Loans on new and used vehicles. The 4.25% rate covers loan terms from 12-72 months on a new vehicle loan and 12-60 months on a used vehicle loan. This is the lowest interest car loan I have seen thus far from a private lender. This is a good deal if you are buying foreign. If you are looking at an American car, you most likely can get 0% if you have good credit as American card dealers always seem to to have financing deals to help move their cars.

You must join Pentagon Federal Credit Union to take advantage of these rates. Signing up is easy. If you don’t fit in their field of membership then sign up to be a member of the National Military Family Association (NMFA). The cost is $20 to sign up and you don’t need to renew the membership every year to stay a member of the Credit Union. Not a bad way to get you in the door here.

I currently have a home equity loan (see review) with PenFed and am very pleased with their service. I have never done a car loan through them, however I can’t imagine that process being much different. I definitely recommend them as a lender.

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