Credit History

Moving Forward with a Tech Chicken…Or Is It an Egg? — Do you need an I-Card? Have you even heard of an I-Card? Equifax is betting that the answers are “yes,” and “you will soon.” You know the question… The credit-reporting company Thursday is coming out with the first such card, short for an online identity card. There’s a big caveat that we’ll get to in a moment, but first a little more explanation about what this is all about. In June, a handful of companies including Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Oracle formed a group called the Information Card Foundation. The goal was to create a way for people to do... [Tags: answer questions, atm cards, bank accounts, caveat, consumers]

Yahoo Canada cancels employee Amex cards [Great Moments In HR] — Beyoncé gets to keep her Amex card. Yahoo Canada employees have been ordered to turn theirs in. And for transpo, they won't get taxi chits anymore. See you on the bus! Here's the full internal email: From: Sachi Kittur [mailto:xxxxxx@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 9:22 AM To: all-canada@yahoo-inc.com Subject: AMEX corporate cards and Taxi Chits Use of Taxi Chits: In addition to our recent halt of pre-paid transportation services, please note that effective immediately, we will no longer be using taxi chits. These changes will allow us to institute better controls as we try to streamline our approvals and... [Tags: amex, amex card, amex cards, business expenditures, canada employees]

Hear Me Speak This Saturday at 1pm in Portland — Just a quick reminder that I’ll be speaking this Saturday at Portland’s Multnomah County Library as part of the Writers Talking lecture series. I’ll be at the Central Library from one o’clock until you all run out of questions. Walk up the steps, go through the main doors, and take an immediate right (before you enter the main library). I’ll be in the U.S. Bank room, across from Friends of the Library bookstore [map]. This is only my second presentation, so I plan to keep it loose and informal. I hope to learn as much from you as you learn... [Tags: central library, cheap vacation, credit history, doors, free museum admission]

Apple Misses iPhone Push Notification September Deadline [IPhone] — So here I'm in Neeeew Yooork. Teeeeerrific! (That's my Andy Warhol impersonation). One of the first things I did this week was to get a US cellphone contract, and since I was there, what the heck, I replaced my broken-screen iPhone with a brand new iPhone 3G—which required a $500 deposit because I have no credit history in this country. But I digress. The important thing is that I discovered that one of the best things of this phone—the one that truly made it a BlackBerry killer—didn't work after I tried it: Push notification services are not working yet. After... [Tags: 3g, andy warhol, apple, battery life, blackberry]

Daily Links: Better Things to Do With My Money Edition — Thanks for all the comments in the $22 movie thread. At first I felt picked on (though I deserved it — I’m the bonehead who spent $14.75 on snacks), but enough repetition has finally beat a point into my head: I don’t need to buy snacks at the movies. Who cares if I’ve done it for 39 years? Just because it’s a life-long habit doesn’t make it right. (”It’s you being lazy and not thinking ahead!” Kris tells me.) The best suggestion from that discussion is to take that $14.75 I spent for snacks and use it for a decent... [Tags: bargain hunter, bonehead, credit history, day job, decent meal]

How to Safely Build Your Credit History [Credit Cards] — The Simple Dollar personal finance weblog offers a five-step checklist for safely and responsibly building your credit history so you can secure good loans and insurance rates in the future. College students have returned to campus, which means the credit card signup vultures are out in full force handing out cards to anyone with a backpack. The Simple Dollar post examines how FICO scores are calculated and what you can do as a new credit card carrier to stay debt-free while building your credit score. A simple suggestion for newcomers: Just make sure you don't charge more than you can... [Tags: backpack, card photo, college students, credit card signup, credit cards]

My recent two-part series on responsible credit card use (Five essential credit card skills and How to choose a credit card) prompted several readers to ask the same question: What’s the best way to cancel credit cards in order to minimize the impact on your credit score? I spent an afternoon doing some research — here’s what I learned. Anatomy of a credit score If you use credit in the United States, you have a credit score. You rent an apartment, buy a house and a car, pay utility bills, and sign up for credit cards. As you spend, banks... [Tags: anatomy, brainer, car pay, centralized databases, credit bureaus]

Lending Club Updates SEC Registration and Discloses Interest Rate Changes — In June 2008, Lending Club filed with the SEC for registration of $600 Million in Member Payment Dependent Notes. Lending Club has been in a "quiet period" since April 2008 while working on the registration. Today the DoughRoller blog was able to gather new information on the SEC registration filing. DoughRoller notes, "In its Amended S-1, LendingClub disclosed that under a new formula, it will also use several other credit markers in calculating interest rates. Specifically, LendingClub will factor in a borrower’s number of open accounts, the number of credit inquiries in the last six months, how much of a... [Tags: calculating interest rates, ceo, club updates, credit cards, credit history]

In Wednesday’s links roundup, I mentioned a long article on the history of debt in America. Rian dropped me an e-mail to say that he liked the essay, too, but found a way to make it more accessible: I have been in contact with the author of the long article about the history of debt in America that you posted recently. I cooked up a PDF version because I like to read long articles offline, and he has agreed to let me post it. He will also be posting it himself when he gets the time to do so. I’ve... [Tags: best jobs in america, buying a house, counterpoint, credit history, debt free living]

Daily Links: Wii Death Edition — At a couple of my other sites, I’ve mentioned that our Nintendo Wii died recently. “What happened?” people have been asking. “How did it die?” I don’t actually know what caused the problem, but it stopped reading discs. (I suspect it died from overuse or from cat fur — or perhaps from a combination of the two.) The repair process has been simple and only moderately expensive. If your Wii dies, you visit the Nintendo web site to do a troubleshooting walkthrough. If the help documents can’t fix the problem, the site gives you a repair order number, and Nintendo... [Tags: arora, cat fur, cindy, columnist, combination of the two]