This post was written by Natalie Rix, Contributing Writer on May 29, 2009 More for less, somewhere else
Wondering how to get more for less in a tough economy? Move to a place where the necessities are cheaper.
That’s the pervasive logic behind the cost of living calculators that have sprung up on websites like cnnmoney.com, which adjusts the salaries of participants to reflect the cost of living in a [...]
This post was written by Mengmeng Wang, Contributing Writer on May 27, 2009 Emergency Savings. How much is enough?
Going through life without an emergency fund is sort of like walking a tightrope with no safety net.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, you’ll get by without a scratch, but it’s that one percent chance that will get you into serious trouble.
But what exactly is an emergency fund? And how large [...]
This post was written by matt wallaert, lead scientist on May 25, 2009 Edward Yingling may not look like your typical magician. An older gentlemen with a serious face, it is hard to imagine him with a top hat, cape, and fake flowers. But while he may not be able to pull a rabbit out of his hat, he’s the primary lobbyist for an industry that is [...]
This post was written by elisa cundiff, outreach coordinator on May 21, 2009 The Senate has finally passed sweeping legislation aimed at overhauling the credit card industry. The days of on-a-whim interest hikes, nonsensical fees, and impossible language are (hopefully) over!
And how did the Credit Card companies respond? With threats toward their customers, naturally.
First off, let’s talk about how the bill changes what credit card companies can do:
This post was written by elisa cundiff, outreach coordinator on May 19, 2009 Many of our users ask what makes a Credit Union different from a regular bank.
And the answer is that technically Credit Unions aren’t banks.
Though the offer many of the same services: savings accounts, checking accounts, credit cards, along with just about any other financial service you’d find at a regular ol’ big bank.
The key difference [...]
This post was written by aya kaneta, community manager on May 15, 2009 Note: I’ve made some changes because the editor of the post seemed to have misunderstood my meant-to-be-sarcastic tone in the opening and it seemed necessary to rephrase my statements as they were in the original text.
I love to read and it has been an expensive hobby of mine because for a while I, like many [...]
This post was written by elisa cundiff, outreach coordinator on May 13, 2009 An ethical, social, or sustainable bank refers to a bank concerned with the social and environmental impacts of its investments and loans. As we mentioned last week, the ethical banking movement is garnering attention for surviving the credit crisis better than many of their mainstream competitors.
The following commercial for The Cooperative Bank demonstrates how these banks [...]
This post was written by aya kaneta, community manager on May 11, 2009 3/13/2009 MNTLY SRVC CHGE $9.50
“MNTLY SRVC CHGE?” First of all: that’s unpronounceable. But even more importantly, what SRVC am I being CHGED for MNTLY? I spotted this $9.50 deduction from my Thrive account on the 13th and I was baffled; I racked my brain, trying to remember, as I checked into my Citibank account to [...]
This post was written by elisa cundiff, outreach coordinator on May 8, 2009 Where does your money go once you deposit it?
When we open a checking or savings account, most of us have little or no idea how our banks invest the money that we entrust to them. But more and more people are asking the financial services industry to provide a little more transparency, and this is [...]
This post was written by chris aviles, copy editor on May 5, 2009 I asked my 95 students, all between sixteen and eighteen, to raise their hand if they had a credit card; nobody raised their hand. I then asked them if they had a checking account with a debit card; almost all of them raised their hand.
© 2009 LendingTree, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Call Thrive at 1.888.831.4080