Bad Credit Personal Finance News Blog

Some people have way more money than they need to have. And when they have all that money, they start spending it on the dumbest things known to man. Why would anyone pay $38 for a bottle of water? Just because you have it doesn’t mean that you should simply try your hardest to waste it.

Jeanne Sahadi over at CNNMoney wrote a short article to help us identify if we have too much money. You better not be doing unresponsible things with your money like some people!

5 signs you have too much money.

If you haven’t done so, please visit www.annualcreditreport.com and request a copy of your free credit report. Everybody is entitled to 3 free credit reports per year now and I think it’s time that you got yours. Don’t visit sites like freecreditreport.com, they will offer you a free credit report only if you sign up for their credit monitoring service, a service that you really don’t need.

I also suggest that you get a free copy of your credit report from www.annualcreditreport.com every 4 months since you are entitled 3 free reports per year; one from each credit reporting agency.

Stop wasting time and get your credit report. Visit www.annualcreditreport.com today!

Long time rivals Visa and Mastercard are working together to create a special group that will set industrywide standards in order to improve credit card security. The two companies began talks about improving credit card security more than a year ago.

The thought given a new push after a credit card breach at CardSystems solution left 40 million people exposed to possible fraud. This is a good deed by both Visa and MasterCard. It is very important to have credit card data safe and secure because of fraud.

Two longtime rivals in the credit card business are working together to create a private group that would set new industrywide security standards as early as the middle of this year, a MasterCard executive said yesterday.

Security officials from Visa USA and MasterCard International began quietly meeting early last year to discuss the best way to improve data security. But the high-profile disclosure of a security breach at CardSystems Solutions, a tiny payment processor that left 40 million cardholder accounts exposed to fraud, has given the effort a new push.

Visa and MasterCard executives have separately proposed the idea of an independent standard-setting body that can certify that member banks and merchants have met certain guidelines and standards.

“We have had preliminary conversations, and it would be a good idea to have these P.C.I. standards in an open standards body,” said Chris Thom, Mastercard’s chief risk officer, referring to the payment card industry rules. “There is no reason that this shouldn’t be done.”

Visa and MasterCard join to secure data