Category Archives: credit card

American Airlines Miles Credit Card seems like a Great Air Miles Reward Credit Card

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I’ve been considering getting a Air Miles Reward credit card recently, and below is what I came across that is making my consider American Airlines Miles Credit Card.

Saving Even More Money on American Airlines Florida Beach Deals

American Airlines provides luxurious Florida beach deals for an excellent price. However, you can make the experience even more affordable with the right rewards card and proper planning of your vacation. In cooperation with various resorts and lavish hotels, you could be spending time at the beach enjoying yourself on the shore of the Atlantic. So, how does one make these memorable vacations cheaper on the pocketbook?

 

The Right Rewards Card in Your Pocket

If you’re making future plans with your rewards cards, you could have already saved up a great deal of miles. As per an expert advice from Milecards.com If you’ve been churning rewards cards in order to accumulate the sign-up bonus on a regular basis, you could have tens of thousands of miles or more saved up for that perfect vacation. What better way to use them than to hit the sunny Florida beaches this summer? Your American Airlines Miles credit card could be your golden ticket to one of the most beautiful and romantic locations in the United States.

 

Accumulating the Signup Bonus

Churning rewards-based credit cards is one of the quickest and cheapest methods for gaining a great deal of points. By meeting the minimum requirements for each reward opportunity, you can quickly cycle from one card to another, gaining the bonus each time. However, every dollar you spend beyond the minimum requirement begins reducing the value of the reward. Since some of these cards can have relatively high interest rates, that extra money you spend could have been saved and used as cash.

 

The Troubles with Buying Miles

American Airlines, as well as other airline companies, allows patrons to “buy” additional miles in order to fly to various destinations. However, buying miles to put onto your account could be better spent as cash at your favorite locations. For instance, it would cost you seven times more money to buy enough miles to fly from Denver to Salt Lake City than it would to merely buy the ticket in cash. This may be acceptable if you only needed a few extra miles to receive a bonus or plan on gifting those miles to someone else.

 

Days of the Week Matter

Since most people plan vacations around weekends and holidays, many airlines and hotels will have varying rates throughout the week in order to make more money. However, there are ways you can use this to your advantage as long as you don’t mind traveling at odd times. Ways that you can pay less for the same vacation could include:

  • Specific days of the week
  • Specific times of the day
  • Seating arrangements

 

Specific Days of the Week

Did you know that you can save between 15 and 20 percent by moving your Florida vacation to Tuesday through Thursday as opposed to Friday through Sunday? While you may have to take a few days off of work, this could save you literally hundreds of dollars depending on the number of people you plan on taking. Even a trip for two could be a couple hundred dollars’ cheaper on a Tuesday than a Friday. In many areas, tourism is also at a low point during these days of the week, which means there are fewer people you have to deal with if you don’t like crowds. This includes staying at luxurious accommodations such as the Palm Beach Marriott Singer Island Resort and Spa. In fact, the most lucrative opportunity that could save you the most amount of money would be to book your flights on Tuesday and Thursday.

 

Specific Times of the Day

Days of the week are not the only method that can save you money during a beautiful Florida vacation. Certain times of the day could save you enough money to buy a decent meal at a restaurant each way. While it doesn’t provide the same overall advantage that traveling on a Tuesday creates, there is a slight difference when you change your flight time from 4 p.m. to 1 or 2 in the morning.

 

Seating Arrangements

Depending on the number of miles you have saved up, moving from first class to coach will definitely be much cheaper. However, sometimes it feels good to pamper yourself once in a while. It could be an excellent way to celebrate an anniversary, birthday or simply because you want to visit the amazing beaches of Florida while flying first class using your saved up rewards miles.

The American Airlines Florida beach deals include some of the most elegant and alluring resorts and hotels in the state. Combination packages like these can be quite attractive as flights and resorts by themselves can cost a great deal of money. This is just one of the many reasons why people utilize rewards cards even though most of the interest rates are higher than some standard credit cards you can qualify for. As long as you’re careful with your spending and try not to carry a balance for too long, you could have a Florida beach vacation at an amazing resort and spa nearly free of charge — outside of paying taxes and fees.

 

Is Plastic Card Budget Worth It?

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What is a “Plastic Card Budget”?

Plastic Card Budgeting is a simple (but special) budgeting technique that can help you spend less money, and at the same time enabling you to realize a discount on your purchases.  So quite literally, it’s a win-win!

How Does a “Plastic Card Budget” Work?

At a time frame specific to your buying patterns (usually monthly), buy all of the expected gift cards or refill a special prepaid card at the beginning of each month.  The prepaid card will server the purpose of a catch-all for those purchase that are gift card specific. The prepaid card is usually a debit card that can be refilled with occasionally to cover non-topic purchases.  You will also need to carry at least $100 in cash for emergencies where you can’t used plastic, but you’d be surprised at how far $200 goes since you can use plastic for practically everything.  In fact, I only use cash for two purposes… 1.) Kid Allowances and 2.) this one small restaurant that doesn’t take credit cards that I wouldn’t go to except the kids love the place.

So when I go out to eat with the family, I usually use a Darden’s Gift card (which can be used at Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse, The Capital Grill, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52).  Between my prepaid card and my Darden’s gift card, 80% of my disposable income needs would be met.

So How Do I Save Money This way?

Mainly with buying the gift cards at a discount via using my rewards credit card (my Favorite being the Amex Blue Card), I’m able to give myself a decent discount on my future discretionary spending!  Depending on where you buy your gift cards at, and the rewards card that you use, you can save 1%, 2%, 3% or maybe even 5% on your gift card purchases.

This article was provided by AXA Business Insurance.

Bests,

Don

Credit Card Reward Points Paid For My New TV

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We’ve been using credit card reward  points to pay for electronics and appliances for the past few years!

The last purchase made with my credit card reward points was a new computer (6 core processor woot!).  But I’ve always wanted to pitch my old CRT 200+ pound TV!  It’s an eye sore, and very heavy to move around when cleaning behind it, not to mention it’s not HD.  But being the green person that I am, I kept it saying that I’ll replace it whenever it finally breaks and we need a new one.  A benefit of waiting meant that I’ve been able to save my credit card reward points too.  In fact, we were able to save $900 work of such points over the past few years!

So last week, our TV finally stopped working, and instead of being sad about spending the money to buy a new one, I was actually excited to go Best Buy to purchase a new one!  After a bit of debate with my wife about the size that we needed (my wife won by the way) I broke down and bought the 46 inch HDTV instead of the 50 inch (or over) size that I wanted.

I have to admit, even though I don’t watch TV much, it was good to finally have this purchase out-of-the-way because the old TV was an  embarrassment.  I mean, we have to be the last family on the block with such a relic…

So what did I get?

Samsung LED, 120 Hz, 1024p – 46″ model

Samsung TV

 

That’s the beauty of reward credit cards like the American Express Blue Cash Card, if you pay your balance in full each month, it can be like a forced spending budgeting plan!  For me I don’t like to spend money so this is one way that I feel like I’m not even paying for it!

Do you take advantage of your credit cards too?  For me, they make me both save and spend money (well points) at the same time!

Bests,

Don

Credit Card Fraud Examples

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Credit Card Fraud

Credit cards have become more commonly and frequently utilized than paper dollar bills in most places. As you might expect, with the rise of credit cards as the primary medium of exchange has come an enormous increase in the amount and instances of credit card fraud. Five particular cases in particular stand out as the top examples of credit card security failing on an epic scale.

 

Number 1 Fraud Case – TJX Clothing Retailer

In 2007, the clothes retailer TJX famously announced that a wily hacker had cracked their security and breached their customer database to make off with vital financial records of credit card, check, and debit card store transactions. Over forty-five million customers were negatively impacted by the security failure, leading this to be the single largest case of credit card fraud in history. Although the FBI and police wanted the leak kept quiet while they investigated, rumors reached the press within months. Eleven men were brought to court and charged, and only one pleaded guilty. The online theft occurred as a result of weakness in the clothing store’s wireless system. Almost five years later, these security issues have not been adequately addressed and fixed.

 

Number 2 Fraud Case – Card Systems Solutions Credit Card Network

The number two instance of credit card fraud impacted forty million different credit cards and their owners in the year 2005. The Card Systems Solutions, headquartered in Arizona, was found guilty in the following investigation of not encrypting its sensitive customer financial data nor adequately protecting its network security system. As a result of the grave debacle, Visa and American Express cut all of their ties to the stricken company, and not surprisingly, it never recovered. Card Systems Solutions was subsequently bought out by Pay By Touch, then shut down later when this new parent company failed to turn their fortunes around as well.

 

Number 3 Fraud Case – Best Western Hotels

The one time largest hotel chain in the world had the third top case of credit card fraud back in August of 2008. A sneaky hacker cracked the security systems of the Best Western Group’s Internet database and obtained a full year’s worth of hotel guest information. This data included not only visitors’ employers, home addresses, and phone numbers, but also their credit card information that they used to guarantee or to pay for their stays. This data was subsequently sold by the Russian Mafia, reportedly for five million dollars. Eight million people had their identity and credit card information compromised by the fraud.

 

Number 4 Fraud Case – Charter Pacific Bank

Over two years time, literally millions of credit card holders suffered credit card fraudulent billing when they were invoiced on their credit cards for pornography sites that they never joined or even remotely knew about. Charter Pacific Bank of California sold the credit card numbers to Kenneth Tayes. The bills ran up to a whopping forty-five million dollars. The shocking part of the story is that federal laws of the day did not make it illegal for this bank to sell its customers’ credit card numbers to the highest bidder. Some of these credit cards were company cards too.

 

Number 5 Fraud Case – 7 Eleven Convenience Store ATM’s

The same perpetrator of the TJX credit card fraud in the first example above managed to successfully practice yet another famous instance of devious credit card fraud. Albert Gonzalez, broke into the 7 Eleven network with the assistance of two Russian hackers who stole the numbers of credit cards and then sent them to the ATM’s of the various stores. With these credit card numbers, they gathered their accompanying PIN’s from the ATM’s, and then they were able to make faked credit cards, using a magstripe writer that banks routinely employed to reprogram credit and debit cards. Though the incidents happened in 2007, the investigators continued to come up with additional examples of this fraud through 2009.

The following was a guest post from the folks at “Compare the Market“.

Thanks,

MR