October 2007 Archives

Call me old-fashioned, but I want my cell phone to be a phone ONLY. Well, unless it's an iPhone, but that is a whole different species. I'm talking about all these new phone/MP3 player combinations featured in commercials with Beyonce. Or paying extra for a phone with a built-in camera and video camera, with quality so terrible, it's difficult to decipher what the fuzzy images are. I am perfectly content with having a sturdy iPod, a high-quality camera and a well-made cell phone rather than combine them and compromise quality and usability. Now that there is talk of mobile phones being used as credit cards, I am, as you can imagine, not thrilled with the idea.

Green has become quite a popular color. Hybrid cars are all the rage, energy-saving light bulbs are flooding the market and Oprah recently had an entire episode devoted to simple ways to "go green." As everyone is finally grasping the importance of global warming and its disastrous effects, businesses are racing to create environmentally friendly products and services. As General Electric's CEO Jeff Immelt says, "Green is green."

I recently heard on NPR that certain issuers are creating "green credit cards" to help consumers save the earth, one dollar at a time. Being the skeptic that I am, I decided to do a little research to find how these cards work.

At least it offers a break from the ever-present "I'm a sexy (nurse, maid, astrophysicist, etc.)" costume, but when it comes to gender roles and women's Halloween get-ups, this credit card outfit might not be much better:

According to a recently released survey from the Federal Trade Commission, 13.5 percent of the adult U.S. population fell victim to fraud in 2005. Of the 30.2 million Americans that got scammed, credit cards were the payment method in 37 percent of all cases, making plastic "the most commonly used method of payment for fraudulent transactions."

Hello, dear readers. I'm Emily, the editorial assistant and a blogger here at CreditCards.com. You may wonder how much a recent college grad could possibly know about credit cards and personal finance, but believe me, I have learned plenty of lessons on the road to adulthood. Through my job here I have also learned so much, and I am eager to share my new knowledge with other credit neophytes.

I grew up without much exposure to credit cards. My mom mostly wrote checks, and my dad (a criminal defense attorney) paid for everything in cash. I was taught to save until you could buy something, which is still a great lesson. My first major purchase was a Sega Genesis in first grade, which I still own (and still works). I painstakingly saved my $1.25 weekly allowance until I could afford it.

We're raising a generation of kids bound for a plastic culture. That's a world where paper currency is obsolete, where you buy and sell goods and services through electronic, wireless or remote transfers of dollars, pounds and Euros. But you...