4 secrets of travel credit cards

By Justin Boyle

When I first heard about credit cards with miles promotions, I figured they were a passing fad. Airlines had long offered programs for frequent fliers, allowing them to amass hundreds or thousands of miles per trip taken, and the card companies didn't seem to need the extra incentive to get people to spend on credit.

As it turns out, plans that offer travel points and air miles have grown into some of the best credit card reward programs available today. With some prudent credit management and a little attention to detail, credit cards with miles promotions can help you travel almost anywhere for pennies on the dollar...

By Justin Boyle

Personal finance topics are all over the news these days. I remember watching as public support for November's Bank Transfer Day grew and grew in the month before the event, and consumer response to recently initiated fees at national banks caused more than one news cycle's worth of stories.

Another national money movement set to take place on Dec. 11, 2011, Balance Transfer Day, has been gathering some momentum as the date of the event approaches. The brainchild of a New York-based freelance writer named Michael Germanovsky, Balance Transfer Day encourages people to use zero interest balance transfer promotions to cut down the interest accrued by standard credit cards with money on them...

By Megg Mueller

Standing in a long line at my local big-box book store recently, two thoughts went through my head: (a) I must be the only one who doesn't have an e-reader, and (b) there are two kinds of credit-card users out there; those who have one card, and those who have multiple credit cards.

You could easily see who was who. The one-card shoppers carefully and slowly handed their cards to the cashiers; multiple-card users did a scan of all the cards in their wallets before choosing then quickly handing it over, as if to say, "Don't give me time to change my mind!" I'm thinking that this dichotomy between shoppers is the reason I've been seeing divergent reports on what's happening with the economy and our personal finance choices in general...

By Justin Boyle

Can you make money off of your credit card? For years, I didn't realize that you could.

When I was first introduced to personal banking products such as credit cards and savings accounts decades ago, I spent some idle time wondering if the seemingly tiny percentages called "interest rates" could amount to any kind of real money. I was sort of a math kid, so I worked out that the 1.59 percent APY on the $50 I'd just deposited with my neighborhood bank branch would earn me 79-1/2 cents if I let it sit unspent in my account for a full year. Oh well, I thought, maybe they'll round up that half-penny and I'll get a cool $0.80.

It was a surprise to me to learn, much later, that sharp-eyed, enterprising customers have figured out how to use credit cards to turn earned interest into significant supplemental income...

By Jeffrey Steele

World Series of Credit Cards: Game 7

There are few sports events more thrilling or dramatic than the winner-takes-all seventh game of the Major League Baseball World Series. The same can be said for this Game 7 of the Money Blue Book World Series of Credit Cards. Winner takes all in this climactic locking of horns between two highly competitive low APR credit cards, the Chase Freedom and the Simmons First Visa Platinum.

As we've done throughout this series, let's go strength by strength through each of these competitors' lineups, to determine which has the edge. And we'll begin, of course, with the low interest rates offered by each of these standout credit cards...

By Jeffrey Steele

World Series of Credit Cards: Game 6

Editor's Note:  These offers have expired and are no longer available.

In this installment of the Money Blue Book World Series of Credit Cards and Charge Cards, we've got two competitors intent on really getting down to business. On the field of battle, they're invariably all business, because theirs is the business of business credit cards.

Let's run down the biggest business attributes of these two arch-rivals, the Ink Cash Business Credit Card from Chase and The Business Gold Rewards Card from American Express OPEN, and see which is likely to have business travelers on their side.