Lisa Rowan's saved articles

My Ally account just dropped from 1.9% to 1.7%. I'm going to leave it. I'm using that account to cover my increased child care costs in a year. I will need 900 a month more but I only make 500 on top of basics so I'm saving every time I can to get ahead of the change.

No, burying money gives a 0% return. 1.69% may be less than inflation, but it is still greater than 0. 

This makes me happy I opened no-penalty CD with Ally @ 2.3% interest rate few months ago for keeping my emergency savings. 

First, you could move some of your money into a CD. Since CDs have a fixed term, you get the same interest rate for the entire time period (six months, a year, whichever option you choose). The longer the term, the higher the interest rate. Read more

I’ve finally gotten to a point where I am not completely living paycheck-to-paycheck, and this means I also have no debt on my credit card. I simply just have it scheduled for my Xbox Live subscription to charge every month on it ($14.99 a month, as it is the Game Pass bundle option), and my card is set to auto-pay.… Read more

I have a question unrelated to utilization. Three months ago I paid off my car loan and refinanced my student loans. Altogether, I went from 13 loans to 1. My credit took a huge dip, but the number of loans I have remains unchanged. It seems like I got dinged big time for reducing the number of loans I have, but… Read more

For years, my brother lived by this philosophy (and my parents of the philosophy that debt was just a part of life). When I started getting serious about my student loans, I turned to him and pointed that him paying 3000 dollars a year on credit card interest was pointless and he ought to do something about it, and… Read more

Here’s the key info: when you pull your credit report, it doesn’t show how old your balance is. Read more

Thank you for this. I have a friend who is in the process of rebuilding his credit, and he always carries a small balance on his credit card every month specifically because of this myth you wrote about. I’ve been telling him that carrying a balance is not a good idea, yet the myth persists.  I’m going to share this… Read more

That’s probably a good way to drop your credit score by several points. Probably not worth it. 

...fuck up your credit rating. All this hassle to short-sightedly save a few bucks? No thanks.

Doesn’t matter what the interest rate is if you don't carry a balance

This is the correct answer. I saved a few hundred dollars buying new phones and smart watches for my wife and I at BestBuy. Paid off the credit card once the first statement came then destroyed the card. All it cost me was a credit check. Well worth the hundreds of dollars it saved me.

Oh boy my wife is 100% going to fall for this she insists on answering spam calls .

This particular scam sounds a lot more sophisticated than your average “this is your bank . . .” cold call. If they kow which bank you use, they must have a list of customers which could be anything from professional-level marketing data to people who follow the bank on Facebook.

I like the US Bank Cash Plus. You have to pick your categories quarterly but I always pick 2% for restaurants and 5% for fast food. No annual fee. 

I got to say the part about having you read the verification code they triggered by resetting your login details during the convo is way more sophisticated than I expect your average scammer to be.

My boss got got by this scam or a close relative. A few details of his experience that I can contribute: Read more

The Uber card also has no foreign transaction fees which is a huge boon if you travel internationally.

Banks or credit card providers, can close access to an account without a PIN number. Read more