It’s not entirely crazy. Once you’ve taken care of the debt, eliminate the possibility of getting into more debt by closing cards. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works in the credit world.

In fact, canceling cards can actually have the opposite effect and dramatically lower your score, making you less likely to qualify for loans when you need them. How is this possible?

It’s because your credit rating is based on the amount of money you have to spend weighed against the amount of money you already owe. Canceling cards may seem like a bright idea to simplify your life and keep you from spending, but it also removes a valuable line of potential money you could tap if you needed to.

Think about it like this. Right now you owe $20,000 in student loans and $100,000 on a mortgage. Luckily, you’re not underwater and your house is worth $120,000, but that essentially brings you back to zero. Your five credit cards give you a $50,000 combined limit, of which you use $5,000 on a monthly basis.

That leaves you with $45,000 potential dollars. Close your credit cards and you lose this money. Never mind that you didn’t actually have it in the first place and it would end up costing you an arm and a leg if you did have to use all of it – the point is (as stated above) it’s money that you could tap if you needed to.

Now, this isn’t the end-all be-all. Ultimately, you have to decide what’s best for you, and simplifying your life might take precedence over the need to keep your credit score hovering around 740.

Plus, there are ways that you can compromise and still achieve much of the same effect. Canceling that $2,000 Sears card and increasing your Visa by the same amount removes clutter and keeps you from losing any of that potential money.

Just think carefully about what you’ll lose and what you’ll gain – whichever way you decide to go. And think long and hard about your future needs. Starting and canceling a lot of accounts is not something you want to be doing if you plan on taking out a mortgage – or a loan to pay for your kid’s college education – any time in the near future.

Does Canceling My Credit Cards Boost My Credit Score? was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!

According to a survey conducted by travel and leisure group AAA, 30.7 million Americans will hit the open road over Memorial Day weekend, a 1.2 percent bump from a year ago. While thicker traffic might mean longer car rides, drivers have to be feeling a little less pain as fuel prices hover around $3.74 per gallon, down nearly 20 cents from last year at the same time.

A Bigger Picture
Energy is everything. It sounds trite, but there is no shame in avoiding calming euphemisms when we talk about the causes and effects of the very thing that moves our world. Like an economic singularity the position of the energy market, most importantly the price of gas, reverberates through our economic universe. The recent decline in gas prices have contributed to a modest increase in consumer spending and a critical stabilization of inflation rates. It’s a little more complicated than that, but the fact of the matter is Americans have a little bit more money in their pockets and essentials like gas, food and shelter are costing the same, or a little less. If you like numbers, the Associated Press breaks it down for you.

Not the Time for Spending
Trust me, everyone wants you to spend that extra bit of money you have. Business leaders, politicians, unemployed people, your mailman, etc… Spending equals growth, of that there is no question, but this is an opportunity to finally start getting ahead financially without having to make so much personal sacrifice. Use the extra cash in your wallet to build a rainy day fund, pay down your credit cards, double-pay on your student loans, or check your credit report and pay off that lingering collection; anything except springing for that 54 inch flat screen.

And now that I am officially the economic party-pooper… Enjoy the relief and the holiday weekend, but remember this is still a time for saving, not spending.

Memorial Day Weekend Offers Americans a Gas Holiday was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

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Spoiler alert… despite your enthusiasm, scooping up Facebook shares may not be so easy for the general public to acquire at the offer price. Associated Press writer Dave Carpenter sums it up best, but the gist is simple – it’s who you know or how much money you have. In other words, if you’re not friends with Mark Zuckerberg, one of his early investors or one of their preferred clients, you better have a brokerage account with anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 already deposited and host of recent trades to go with that portfolio.

How an IPO works…
Bummer right? This kind of exclusivity seems to fly in the face of what is inherent in the phrase ‘initial public offering’. So how does it actually work? IPO’s are offered by private companies for a number of different reasons, the most popular of which are raising capital for expansion or resolving a poor cash flow issue. In Facebook’s case, they have neither of these problems. Instead Mr. Zuckerberg’s purported motivation is to bring about a long awaited payoff for many Facebook employees. After the IPO is finalized, many of them will become millionaires.

So before the actual first day of trading occurs for the newly dubbed FB stock, Facebook and its underwriters (the investment banks that have been hired and charged with evaluating, pricing and marketing the Facebook stock) go on a presentation roadshow to help attract big investors. This is why ‘Johnny Investor’ is rarely invited to this part of the initial sale of the stock, which is conducted via auction prior to the first day of actual trading.

Do I want Facebook shares and if so… how do I get them?
This is complicated so we will take the second part first. To buy shares of Facebook you have to open an account with a brokerage firm, wait for trading to begin and then instruct your account manager to buy the shares. You can do this yourself with popular self-made investor tools like ETrade.

The question of whether or not Facebook is a good investment is up for serious debate. Carpenter lays out some of the pros and cons in his piece and the video we included should shed a little light on the subject. At first glance you may think to yourself how could I go wrong buying stock in such a profitable company. However, the question isn’t about profit, it’s about growth potential. How much will Facebook grow after I buy my shares? This is a more challenging question. Facebook revenue is largely generated by Facebook ads, which recently have come under fire for not being as effective as advertised. Furthermore, while Facebook users account for nearly 15 percent of the global population, new user acquisition has slowed considerably.

It’s not all bad news. It is a safe bet to say that Facebook will continue growing. This writer has incredible faith in their ability to continue driving social media innovation and creativity – never a bad investment in any industry. Talk to a broker, a friend who is in investment banking and see what they think, but my final piece of advice would be to wait for the IPO to launch and the rollercoaster of initial expectations and frenzied trading to die down before jumping in feet first.

Facebook IPO – Not as Public as You Think was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!

If your friends are struggling financially, here are some ideas for how you can help:

Don’t give them money: If one of your friends comes to you asking for financial help, it can be tempting to give them money. But as “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert discovered, sometimes too much financial generosity between friends can be a bad thing. Friendships can all too often be damaged when money comes into the picture. Giving money to friends can create uncomfortable feelings of obligation, resentment, or an unwelcome power imbalance in the relationship.

Don’t co-sign on a loan: Many people might be tempted to help their friends by co-signing on a loan, making it possible for the friend to borrow money to buy a car or pay off debt. This is a well meaning but all-too-common money mistake. If you co-sign on a loan, no matter how much you trust your friend and no matter how sincere they are in wanting to repay the loan, the truth is that you are taking a big risk. As a co-signer on the loan, you are responsible for paying it back if your friend cannot make the payments. You might find that co-signing on a loan leads to a lot of lost money as well as a lost friendship.

Do give them your time: Instead of giving money to your friends, give them your time, attention and support. Have your friends over for dinner. Offer ideas and encouragement. Help them find supportive resources like Consumer Credit Counseling. If your friend needs to find a new job, offer to introduce them to helpful new connections from your professional network. Help them get ideas for helpful tools to set a budget, improve their credit and create a stronger financial foundation.

Do encourage them to look for the root cause: Have a conversation with your friend about what might be causing their financial problems. Of course, if someone has lost a job, the answer is easy – but often when people have financial problems there is a deeper, underlying cause that is limiting their ability to manage their personal finances. Do they have a lack of motivation? Are they depressed? Are they spending too much because they’re trying to “keep up with the Joneses” and live a lifestyle that they can’t afford and don’t even want? Can they simplify their life and drastically cut their spending? Do they need career counseling to find a new career path that is more fulfilling and more lucrative? What is holding them back from financial success?

Often when people are having financial problems they feel isolated and ashamed. Make it clear to your friend that you care about them and you want to help. But make sure you help in the right way. When people are in financial trouble, getting a loan from friends might do more harm than good. Friends can often help most by helping get their friends connected to supportive resources, new ideas, and helping their friends come out of the financial difficulties feeling stronger and more empowered than ever.

How to Help a Friend with Financial Problems was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!

While the specifics haven’t been revealed and now everyone is reeling from the former Yahoo CEO’s most recent admission that he has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, there is a clear lesson personal finance truth seekers can take away from this business page gossip. In today’s challenging and incredibly competitive job market, finding an edge to set you apart from other candidates is the thing every job seeker desperately pursues.

The web is bloated with both good and bad advice on interviewing, resume writing, job searching, follow-up protocols and the rest of the nonsense we all must deal with when enduring the employment acquisition rigmarole.  Instead of sending you to a host of other resources, this is actually an area, as a freelancer and consultant, with which I have some serious and unfortunate experience. Here are a few basic tips you can count on to help put your best foot forward with potential employers.

Demonstrate Value:  First and foremost, sending out the same resume to every employer rarely works. While you may not have to reinvent the wheel every time you apply for a new job it is imperative that you read the job description and then tailor your resume, accomplishments and descriptions of your professional experience to the needs of the employer and the position they are advertising. In other words, find specific aspects of your professional life that clearly demonstrate the value you will bring to the company and the position.

Personalization:  Cover letters are tricky. Deciding what kind of tone to take, how formal or informal you may be, or perhaps even how honest you want to be about your personal circumstances all depend on what you can glean from the temperament of the employer. Are they all business, do they appreciate a bit of humor, can I express how badly I may need the job? All of this is part of a gut feeling you should get when you investigate the company itself. Sadly, no one can really teach you how to do this. However, the most important research you can do when building a cover letter is who will be receiving that letter. If you can avoid it, never start a cover letter with “To Whom it May Concern”. Find out who makes the decision, do a little digging and find a way to connect your self with the person who is hiring on both a personal and professional level.

Digitize Yourself: People are going to Google you and the way of the attached word doc resume has gone the way of the dodo. There are some web-based options to help you build your digital self, but my favorite is www.zerply.com. In addition to ensuring you don’t have any naked pictures of yourself on your Facebook page, it is time to create a digital resume that is easily accessible by prospective employers.

Fudged Resume Shakes up Yahoo was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

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Personal Finance Blog of the Week – Money Crashers was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!

I won’t burden you with some wild-eyed apocalyptic vision of world finance because it’s a Friday and the sun is shining. What I will do is give everyone a chance to watch the greatest explanation of what credit default swaps actually are, and how they really work.  By the way, the Quizzologists love Khan Academy.

JP Morgan Sends Investors to the Mattresses was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!

President Obama’s, until very recent, opposition to gay marriage is a blue ribbon example of emotions driving policy making decisions. The same goes for those voters in North Carolina. The word marriage is something wholly inseparable from our emotional constitutions. It involves the ephemeral and indescribable feeling of love, at least it should, and pragmatism gets tossed out the window when we discuss matters of the heart. The same holds true for opponents of the ban, their philosophical foundation rocked by the notion that any government policy would prevent someone from loving another person. And this is where the same-sex marriage debate gets mired in a quicksand pit of its own making.

To this writer, from a purely pragmatic perspective, the gay marriage issue is a financial issue. Were you to, forgive the pun, but divorce the word marriage from the debate and start passing pieces of legislation that allowed gay couples to file joint tax returns, make health care based decisions for one another, buy a house together, etc… I don’t believe the voting public would rally around an opposition to those things. Toss the word marriage in there and the situation goes nuclear, pushing everyone on either side of the debate to an emotional DEFCON 1.

The fact of the matter is, marriage is a religious, not public policy term. The government’s use of the term marriage is to define the financial situation of taxpayers, hence the term ‘common law marriage’ applied to live-in heterosexual couples who for all intents and purposes are ‘married’ but haven’t taken vows, knelt in a church or engaged in the chicken dance in front of family and friends over cooling plates of prime rib and empty cocktail glasses. Culture, not government defines marriage. We would all do well to remember this in an effort to tamp down the rhetoric. But, it’s an election year so who am I kidding.

In the world of your personal finances, cold hard rationalizations are what are going to keep you secure and financially safe. We don’t invest in company’s because we like the name, or give our friends $10,000 because they are our friends and they think they’ve invented the next Shamwow in their garage. You don’t buy a house you can’t afford because the window treatments are pretty and the tire swing reminds you of grandma’s farm. You may want to, but you don’t.

Now for the payoff as I graciously thank you for your attention during my diatribe. With a housing market still plump with quality, cost-friendly property’s, many people are seizing this moment to jump into the home owning game. But all this talk of marriage got me thinking, what if you’re not and you want to buy a house with someone, anyone, that you’re not joined to in financial government sanctioned matrimony. Can you get the same tax benefits, protections?

We say it over and over on the Quizzle Wire, but reality is repetition you’ve finally stopped ignoring. If you want to buy a house, are even casually thinking about it, check your credit. Too often first time, and second time for that matter, homebuyers realize all too late that their credit needs improvement to secure a sensible home loan. Credit scores can improve, but it takes time and discipline.

So if you want to buy a house with a partner, check your credit and then watch this video before you sit down to discuss this with you’re potential co-buyer. And remember, love and money – like emotions and public policy – never mix.

Mixed Emotions – Finance, Obama, Gay Marriage and Quicksand was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!

According to a report released by the National Association of Realtors today, median home prices in 74 of 146 metropolitan areas measured for the survey. That’s a considerable increase from the increases seen in only 29 areas last quarter. This price stabilization is owed to a 22 percent decrease in the number of available, pre-owned, homes on the market from a year ago. That, and record low mortgage rates have helped the market discover its bottom.

Good News for Buyers and Sellers
Potential buyers haven’t missed a friendly market just yet, but the window for scooping up a great house at an incredible price is quickly closing. The good news is the balancing of the market might encourage more sellers to list their property, increasing the supply and keeping prices steady, but still rising. Furthermore, mortgage rates remain historically low. If you’re looking to buy a house, now’s the time. If you’re serious you should start by checking your credit for free – no social security or credit card information needed – at Quizzle.com Not be a shameless self promoter, but in addition to the free credit report and score you’ll receive, the Quizzologists track mortgage rates, provide advice on how you may be able to improve your credit score with an easy to follow action plan tailored to your needs, and recommendations on the types of mortgages for which you are eligible.

The good news for sellers is clear. The market is stabilizing and the value of your largest investment is hopefully on its way to its former glory. Depending on the market your in, if you’re looking to sell and move, you can now get a more appropriate price on your home and find a great deal on your prospective new home. All in all a real estate market stabilization is good for everyone involved. The Quizzle Wire offers articles and advice on all aspects of home buying and selling. Take a look around and see what you can see. If you have actual questions, the Quizzologists are on hand ready to find you answers. Leave a question here and we’ll respond.

Home Prices Stabilizing, Rising was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!

Financial adaptability is critical to the personal finance master. You need to accrue savings, understand your cash flow, debt to income ratio, general costs of living and other unforeseen costs that crop up when navigating this life. Like a manatee, you don’t have to move quickly, but be willing to adapt your lifestyle to your current fiscal reality. While you won’t need 45 million years to perfect the art of personal finance, understanding the difference between what is necessary and what is desired, then being able to make a lifestyle change to manage those differences will put you on the right path to personal finance sustainability.

There is no greater ‘go with flow’ type mammal than the Florida manatee. Unlike their brethren they have the greatest tolerance for salinity extremes. In other words, they can move freely between the saltiest and freshest of water sources.  Forced to migrate to warmer waters in cooler months, some of the Florida manatees have taken to congregating at the mouths of power plants, soaking up the warmer water and keeping drainage pipes free of unwanted vegetation. They are highly adaptable.

Personal financial health begins with two things – the first, as discussed is adaptability. The second is understanding credit. Credit, good or bad, effects where and how you live, what kind of car you may buy, if you can start a business, affording your child’s college education and much more. Credit permeates almost every area of personal finance. The Quizzologists have developed an easy to use system to help identify potential areas of improvement for your credit score. With the only truly free credit report and score on the web, Quizzle.com wants to help you evolve into the personal financial master we know you can be.

In a Quizzlewire Wildlife metaphor Tuesday, we give you manatees mingling with Florida swimmers with nary a care in the world: a moment of Zen, if you will.

Manatees – Personal Finance Experts of the Sea was originally featured on Quizzle Wire

Quizzle.com is the easiest way to get a complete understanding of your credit. Visit Quizzle.com to get your free credit report and score. No credit card or social security number necessary!