Financial & Travel Musings

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Vacation time is almost upon us with the kids due to get out of school in a matter of weeks. If you’ve not yet booked your vacation accommodation or perhaps not even decided on where to, ’tis time to get moving!

Although lots of people book their accommodation incredibly early, there is still a reasonable selection of accommodation still available in many areas. Typically you will have to spend that little bit more as the cheaper properties tend to go first but in some ways that’s no bad thing as, by and large, you’re left with a selection of extremely high quality accommodation at this point.

For example, if you were looking at Outer Banks rentals the one in the photo isn’t available ’til the end of September but there are a half-dozen very similar ones available in July. Where you may have trouble is if your requirements are overlly specific eg if you’re trying to get a specific number of rooms with a sea view and at a particular price range but if you relax the requirements that aren’t absolutely fixed, you’ll get a place.

Popularity: 33% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

For most people their first thought is to head along to their bank and sign up for a credit card terminal.

The snag is that if you’re a new business chances are that they’ll simply say “no” unless you are in an area where there’s simply no option not to accept cards (eg restaurants, hotels) but the majority of business don’t fall under those headings. However, in some ways that “no” is lucky as banks usually have higher credit card acceptance charges.

What you should really do is to checkout places like authorize.net which are much more geared up to online businesses and can generally provide you with the ability to accept cards quite early in the life of your business and at lower cost than a direct approach to your bank is likely to come up with.

Popularity: 47% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Some credit card comparison sites make a point of recommending the best credit card on the basis of the commission that they’ll get when you apply for it through their site. This review isn’t like that. There are no affiliate links on any of the recommendations below. That doesn’t mean that this review is therefore perfect, just that there’s no financial bias attached to it.

The first thing that you need to realise is that there is no single “perfect” card for all occasions. What is perfect for you at any given time is determined by a combination of:

1. your financial circumstances ie whether you are a good, average or poor credit risk;
2. your intended use for the card eg whether you will pay in full each month, use the credit facility and whether you intend it for domestic use or for holidays; and
3. the characteristics of the card in question ie its charges, interest free period, interest rate and foreign exchange charges.

If you’re a poor credit risk or have no credit history, the card to go for is Capital One’s classic card because there’s no annual fee and a 56 day interest free period for purchases when you pay the balance in full. The headline interest rate is 35% but if they think your credit history is better than you do then they’ll normally offer you a different card at a much lower rate. They’re also a very reasonable bunch of people to speak to on the phone which is more than can be said for a lot of credit card companies.

If you’re going to pay in full each month then the only sensible thing to do is to get a card with no annual fee that will pay you through points or straight cash. Frankly, the bulk of the points schemes are next to worthless because few people actually spend the points, therefore cash back schemes are the best way to go on this. Here again, Capital One win with their cashback card which comes with a 45 day interest free period for purchases when you pay the balance in full. The headline interest rate is 16% and the card refunds 1% of the value of the purchases you make with it; there’s usually an offer period when they refund 4%.

If you’re going to use the credit facility then you want a card with a low interest rate. At present, the clear winner on this appears to be BarclayCard with their simplicity card. This comes with a 56 day interest free period for purchases when you pay the balance in full. The headline interest rate is 6.8% although that may be adjusted depending on your own circumstances; there’s no annual fee.

If you’re going to use it on holiday then you want a card with low or no foreign exchange charges. The normal recommendation for that is the Nationwide Building Society but at the moment the Post Office, Thomas Cook and Abbey also offer cards without the foreign exchange charges. The Nationwide tend to be quite stingy with credit limits.

If you’d like a high limit then it’s usually best to try one of the cards issued by MBNA although do bear in mind that MBNA are a ruthless bunch and raised interest rates from 15% to 35% for a considerable number of their customers.

I think those should cover all the circumstances that can arise and which have specific cards meeting them. In that none of the above cards charge an annual fee you could, of course, apply for all of them (space out the applications by a month or so if you’re doing that).

Popularity: 45% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!