What do you have to show for yourself financially?

Let's do an exercise:

Step 1.

Write down your annual income.  Then multiply this amount by the number of years you have been working.  It’s a pretty big number right?  This is the total income that you have earned so far in your working career. 

For example:

If you make $40,000 a year and you've been working for 8 years, your total income is $320,000.

If you make $100,000 a year and you've been working for 4 years, your total income is $400,000. 

J.P. Morgan Chase Palladium Card Review

When I first heard about the J.P. Morgan Palladium card, my emotions took over and I immediately knew that I had to get my hands on it. 

This is a brand new credit card that first came out in 2011.  This is a card that is constructed out of the precious Palladium metal, laser etched with 23K gold, and has your signature laser engraved into the back of the card, with smart chip and signature technology.  This is a card that weighs a heavy one ounce, reportedly worth approximately $1,000 in the high end materials used to produce the card itself. 

When this card first came out, there was a great deal of mystery surrounding the requirements of card membership. Read these articles describing the card:

You're Probably Not Rich Enough For This Credit Card

The Credit Card for the 1 Percent of the 1 Percent

One article reported that card membership required a private banking relationship with J.P. Morgan, in which the average account holder has around $30 million (that's $30,000,000.00) in assets held in the bank.

The 2 browser trick for 100,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles

EDIT: As of 2/2013, looks like Citibank is putting a stop to the 2 browser trick for 2 American Airlines credit cards.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, one should always make every purchase possible with a rewards credit card.  Rewards credit cards allow you to get cash back, points or frequent flyer miles on every purchase that you make.  It’s free money, and if you’re not making every purchase with your credit card, you’re not maximizing on the amount of rewards you can earn.

One exception: remember to never make purchase on items you don’t need just to earn a few extra bonus points; in most cases this extra spending may not be worth it.  You’re better off spending money only on purchases that you can afford.

While rewards credit cards give you rewards on every purchase, the absolute fastest way to earn free rewards is with sign up bonuses.

Free Credit Scores and Reports

There are many different ways to get your credit report and credit score for free.

As a reminder, the 3 major credit reporting agencies are:

I've mentioned my favorite ways to obtain your free credit report and score in a previous article. Those free websites are:


Credit Karma
Credit Sesame
Quizzle

These 3 sites don't actually provide your real FICO score but a simulated FAKO score.  In my experience, the scores are actually very close. Credit Karma will provide your simulated Transunion score while Credit Sesame and Quizzle will provide your simulated Experian scores.