Bargaineering 2009 Annual Financial Review Week
Since Career Week was so successful, mostly because of all of your insightful comments, I thought I’d bring you another “week” of focused posts. This time, since we are so near the end of the year, we’ll be focusing on a n annual financial review. In reality, the topics in this series apply to any time of the year,not just year’s end, but you have to take a look at least once a year. I hope the tryptophan from Tha

Happy Turkey Day!
To those who are celebrating Thanksgiving today, I hope you and yours have a festive Thanksgiving day and weekend. I hope you celebrate the merriment and cheer that is Thanksgiving, enjoy the time with loved ones, and stuff yourself full of food prepared with loving care. To those who aren’t celebrating Thanksgiving, eat something decadent. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to thank you all for visiting today and every day. So often people think that I’

How To Get A Low Interest Rate APR on Credit Card Debt
I’ve been getting a lot of stories of people struggling to get out of debt because of the recent How to Fight a Debt Collector series. They haven’t reached the point of fighting debt collectors yet and they want to keep it that way. As much as others like to malign those deep in debt, the vast majority of debtors want to make good on what they owe. If you’re in heavy credit card debt, the first thing you need to do is

Federal & State Telephone Recording Laws
In the last post about suing debt collectors that violate the law, one of Craig’s recommendations was to record your conversations with debt collectors as evidence they violated the FDCPA. In the comments, there was discussion about whether recording or taping telephone conversations was legal. I thought a post clarifying the issue would be valuable. Federal law permits the recording of phone calls and “other electronic communications” with the consent of at least one party to the c

Don’t Write Personal Checks
Last weekend, the Consumerist mentioned a story that fewer retailers were accepting personal checks this holiday season. They cited check fraud as the big reason for not accepting checks and I argue that check fraud is the big reason why many consumers should not write checks. The personal check is one of the most insecure methods of payment. Consider this test, I call it the internet safety test. If you took an image of a completely filled out of a check, how much of it would you have to black out before you’d feel comforta