Looking to travel? Capital One's Venture Rewards card might be your ticket

By Jim Sloan

Editor's Note: Thank you for your interest, this offer expired and is no longer available.

For those just out of college or starting fresh, a break in the form of traveling to another state or country is usually near the top of wish lists. Finding ways to fund traveling however, can be a significant barrier to actually realizing this. If you're good with credit cards, though, a new promotion from Capitol One may be able to help you with your travel ticket.

Traveling in reach?

Capital One has rolled out a new Venture Rewards credit card promotion with a "Match My Miles" promotion that will match the number of miles you have accumulated on another airline credit card up to 100,000 miles.

You earn the additional 100,000 miles--the equivalent of $1,000--if you put at least $1,000 on the card in the first three months.

The offer is good for new Venture and Venture for Business primary account holders. Current Capital One cardholders who want to upgrade to the Venture Rewards card or swap their existing Capital One card will get the mile match if they get approved, said Sukhi Sahni, a senior communications manager with Capital One.

The company will continue the offer this until they've given away a billion miles or until May 13, 2011, whichever comes first--it's a first-come, first-served proposition.

Miles on top of miles: How does it work?

If you have airline miles on one of 13 airline credit cards currently on the market, Capital One will match

By Ryan Hurlbert

When I was starting out, a wallet full of credit cards was a sign of success--if you had five or six cards, you were obviously doing well. Like so many others, I got myself into a bit of a payment crunch; each minimum payment by itself was small, but when I lumped them all together each month, well, it was more than I had! I consolidated as many together as I could, took a second job, and paid, and paid, and paid.

Eventually, I paid everything off and now carry one general credit card and one gas card, although I have another account at a men's clothing store I use occasionally. In today's society, you can't buy anything on-line without one, can't rent a car without one, and try and find an airline that will let you write a check for a ticket!

It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of getting a credit card, and not read the terms. Luckily for you, the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 makes understanding your credit card easier than ever. Now, credit card companies have to post their disclosures on-line, and they have to be written in "plain English".

Now that understanding credit cards is made easier for you, here are five terms that you should be sure to understand when evaluating credit card offers:

• Grace period. You have to have at least 21 days from the

By Joe Taylor Jr.

Take care of your credit, and credit card companies will want to take care of you.

Banks have put together some hard-to-find credit card offers to attract consumers with high FICO scores. If you've built a strong credit history, you can earn unusually high cash back rebates, travel perks, and low interest rates on balance transfers. According to CardRatings.com, five credit cards rank highest at offering great perks to consumers with excellent credit: ...

By MoneyBlueBook

Dating is like walking on a minefield: You never know what your next step will bring. Now to make it even harder, dating experts are adding a new twist.

It used to be as easy as intuition, dinner and a movie, but now experts say that financial compatibility is an important factor in finding the right person. If turns out that if the man or woman you are dating is a financial mess, they can take you down with them.

If you survived the dating battlefield like me and are now married, you probably have some of your own war stories. But if you are still out there in dating never-never land, you may need a little help. I can give you a few tips on how to figure out if your date is a financial dud.

You just have to read the signs:

1. Overspends like crazy

If your date keeps trying to impress you with how much everything they own costs, you might think twice about your future with them. Wild spending can lead to all kinds of financial problems as witnessed by the record number of mortgage defaults and credit card delinquencies seen in the last couple of years. If your date seems overly impressed by their own spending, it may be that they are forgetting an important fact: Eventually they have to pay for it all.

2. Leases to impress

Although it is not a set rule, in most

By Joe Taylor Jr.

If you feel awkward getting asked to open a store credit card when you're shopping for blue jeans, imagine what happens when you get the same offer in the emergency room.

Medical credit card applications abound at the offices of dentists, doctors, and even veterinarians. While relaxed approval processes make these cards appealing to Americans in need of urgent care, critics of medical credit cards warn that the cure for long term medical debt might be worse than the disease. Do these credit cards deserve their bad rap?

How medical credit cards hit the market

It was unheard of for earlier generations of Americans to let medical bills go unpaid. Our parents and grandparents couldn't run the risk of bumping into the neighborhood doctor at church or in the supermarket with outstanding invoices hanging over their heads.

Over the years, deductibles and co-insurance ceilings got larger, forcing health care providers to take on greater risk. Practices got bigger, too, enabling more of us to slide our medical bills to the back of the stack without feeling very guilty. Lenders partnered with medical providers to offer easy applications, using many of the same techniques perfected in retail stores.

Shifting medical credit cards from emergency coverage to elective financing

With finance charges and payment options similar to retail credit cards, most consumers found terms reasonable enough to get them through a crisis. However, the medical credit card market kicked into high gear

By Peter Andrew

I'm not expecting any sympathy, but it's not easy writing product reviews. That's because it's rarely possible to rank different features in a way that's meaningful to everyone.

Take televisions as an example. I badly need a new one, and recently started reading TV reviews. All I've discovered so far is that there isn't a perfect model, or certainly not one in my price range. One has a brilliant picture, but slightly lower sound quality, or vice versa. Another is great except for occasional motion blur during action sequences. Yet more are good, but ugly, and don't fit in with my living room decor. When I eventually come to make a choice, I'll have to decide which of these factors are most important to me personally.

And it's the same with credit cards. I can tell you all about the Chase Sapphire? credit card, but whether it's the best for you will depend on your individual needs and wants. What I can say for sure is that it is a good all-rounder, and that you should almost certainly include it on your list of potential cards.

Not for everyone

But let's begin by identifying those who should think carefully first before including it on their list of possibilities. If your credit score's going through a down patch, the chances of your application for a Chase Sapphire card being accepted are remote. This is a premium product that's reserved for those with great credit.

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