Comments on: Credit Card Companies – How to really stick it to them

By: Father Sez » Archive » Links – The National Monument of Malaysia Edition

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:33:48 +0000

[...] liked this post by GLBL on getting our own back on the credit card companies. Unfortunately this calls for us to be financially well informed and responsible. I am sure the [...]

By: fathersez

fathersez — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:56:35 +0000

I like the heading of the article. You are right as usual. The CC companies are designed to make money the deeper we get into our holes. So naturally they use their vast resources to shoo us into the holes. Once we get educated (by blogs like yours), they move on to the younger more ignorant people. I really would not be surprised if they come up with something for kids soon.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:15:05 +0000

We are sooooo close to getting out of credit card debt. Fully expect to be free and clear sometime in April. Just in time for our car insurance rates to jump as two of our teens will receive their driver’s license.

I couldn’t get any of the credit cards to lower their rates for me, and I wasn’t getting a lot of great offers through the mail (I noticed the mega jump from 0% to things like 21% after a certain deadline was met, not when I missed a payment. The 0% is sometimes only good through the next 6 months, for example. Most of the low balance transfer limits didn’t truly help us…in fact, we ran into the danger of just missing more due dates because we had so many.

We ended up going to our credit union for a loan. Instead, they gave us a credit card that was half the % we were paying on our lowest card, and with enough space to transfer almost all our existing credit. I put the automatic withdrawl payment into affect for the minimum amount each month. For “snowballing” I made online payments. Every creditor is “bookmarked” and I edit the bookmark’s title with the next due date so I won’t miss sending a payment. Until we were able to build up a buffer-savings, I didn’t want autopayments on any of the other things (like phone, electricity) in case I needed to juggle a little. Soon, I didn’t have to juggle at all! We rent, so we don’t have a mortgage, so after April we’ll only have a single car payment at a low rate.

By: Building Business Credit

Building Business Credit — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:41:20 +0000

Building Business Credit…

Companies should want to have social media user groups organized passionately around their product or service. Many of these customers will be sharing powerful new information about how to use your product or service, testimonials, even new uses and co…

By: Roundup and Link Love - First Full Weekend of Spring 2009 | The Wisdom Journal

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:17:44 +0000

[...] Credit Card Companies – How to really stick it to them from Glblguy at Gather Little by Little. [...]

By: Weekly Round Up: Family in Town

Weekly Round Up: Family in Town — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 02:57:28 +0000

[...] Credit Card Companies – How to really stick it to them [...]

By: micki

micki — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:58:10 +0000

I love the picture. I stopped using credit but this month had to break it out for a couple of things. My dog had some issues in Feb and broke my emergency fund, and then had issues before I could get it back up to speed again (winter is slow for me) so I broke it out for that and her meds. Ugh.

Amex cut me 2x in less than a month. I’m sure my credit took a hit. I’m a bit peeved because they were the ones who raised the limit without asking. I’m faithful in my payments & I don’t pay just the minimums (I generally pay about 50-100 over the minimum which is already pretty hefty.) This seems like a fairly crummy way to treat a faithful customer but I guess that is the new way of doing business.

Anyway, I am working on getting my emergency fund back up so I can make all my credit cards go bye-bye. Oh how I hate ‘em.

By: Keith

Keith — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 15:36:26 +0000

Very sound advice. It took me years to pay off debt that developed when I was married and went with me after my divorce. I like any idea that involves “sticking it to the credit card companies” and you have some good ideas in this article.

Now, could you write an article on how to stick it to the cell phone companies?

By: Abigail

Abigail — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:40:22 +0000

Once we get this debt paid off, we will always be paying our balances in full.

Until then, we pay with each paycheck. This reduces the effect of the double billing cycle, and it keeps us from ever getting a late fee.

By: SJ

SJ — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:36:58 +0000

Hrm. Don’t credit cards always make money for the company?
i.e. charging a small fee to the vendor?

We get convenience, the vendor gets potentially more customers, and there’s slightly more money paid by us regardless of method paid (which we don’t completely recoup via rewards?)