The Changing Face of Credit
One Tuesday evening, after watching the advertisement on television about a 0% interest rate credit card, it was not soon after a huge buzz around this product emerged. Everyone thought they had jumped on the next big thing like they were as financially astute as Peter Sutherland. This apparent too good to be true offer started appearing on many cards.This mainly means credit cards that offer zero interest for even more than 12 months.
Enjoying an initial zero percent on a credit card can be a super deal but you’ll need to be careful very careful. One foul step and you can wave goodbye to the interest free period. Its a good idea to read the details of the deal. Check to see whether zero percent refers to balance transfers or purchases. Do you realise when the initial offer will come to the end? What kind of interest rate will you pay then? You always need to question how trustworthy the offer seems.
If your spending can quickly spiral out of control you need to be careful with this credit card you can follow your spending urges but only for a particular amount of time. Writing checks or making ATM purchases that total more than you have in your checking account can have devastating results. As well as the humiliation of collecting a bounced check from the merchant it was written to there are the high fees a bank charged when this happens. To help avoid such problems, most banks have developed various Overdraft Protection programs. Such schemes such as the payments protection scheme are widely seen as bad value for money.
Courtesy overdraft-protection plans often come as part of a checking account package. Recently there have been many high profile cases where people have claimed their PPC charges back.
