There are two major reasons that you want to do all that you can to prevent business identity theft if you own or operate a business of any size. The first reason is that you don’t want the financial information of your own business to be compromised by someone who might try to use your business credit to run up debts under an assumed identity. The second reason is that you want to make sure that your customers are safe from identity theft in order to both avoid legal problems and to maintain your reputation with your customers.

Here are five things that you can start doing right now to prevent business identity theft from happening to your business:

1. Physically secure your building and your records. The building where the business is located should be physically secure with an alarm system in place to make sure that no one can get on the premises. As a further precaution, you should make sure that all physical records containing identifying and financial information are carefully locked up so that even if someone does break in, they can’t easily steal any of those records. …Read more

If someone asked you when we started to use credit cards, what would you say? Most people believe that credit cards were only invented in the past fifty years. To some extent, it’s true that the modern methods of using credit cards in the United States weren’t popular until relatively recently. But did you know that the basic foundation of credit card use was around even towards the end of the nineteenth century?

Here is a brief timeline for you about the history of credit cards:

• 1887. A novel called “Looking Backward” by Edward Bellamy was published which basically discussed the use of credit cards in a way that is fairly common today. Even the term “credit card” was used repeatedly in this novel. It is considered the precursor to modern credit card use and information. …Read more

The majority of people do not like having to call their credit card issuers to discuss questions and problems with a customer service representative. Unfortunately, there are going to be times when you need to do this despite the fact that you really don’t like to do so. The method of discussion that you choose to engage in can greatly impac your success when dealing with customer service people at card issuers. Learning different approaches to talking with customer service reps can help you make these transactions go a lot more smoothly.

Here are some of the options that you have in terms of how to talk to a customer service representative: …Read more

If you were to sit down with ten different website articles about how to choose a new credit card, you would find that they all offer different types of advice (much of which is contradictory). What you would find that all of these articles have in common is that none of them will tell you to rely on your intuition when choosing a credit card. For the most part, this makes sense. When choosing a new credit card, you want to make an informed decision based on the facts and financials of the credit card account. However, you shouldn’t discount the importance of checking in with your gut instinct before you go ahead and sign on the dotted line of a credit card application. …Read more

One of the last things that you want to think about when someone that you love has died is the fact that burying this person is going to be really expensive. Unfortunately, that’s a fact that has helped to drive funeral costs sky high. Since people don’t want to deal with the details of paying for a funeral, they are often willing to just pay for whatever is suggested to them by the salesperson in terms of the service and the burial items that are needed. This means that people tend to spend a lot more money on funerals than they need to simply because of the fact that they are being approached by salespeople at a time during which they aren’t inclined to haggle. Most of these people end up putting the costs on credit cards and find themselves still paying for the funeral years later. …Read more

One of the first things that you are probably going to want to do when you become an adult and start to head off to college is to get your hands on a student credit card. Even people who aren’t planning to go to college may find it fairly easy to get their first credit card without the help of a parent. This is great in the sense that it allows you to identify yourself as an adult and to start establishing your independence. However, it can pose problems if you aren’t being up front with your parents about your use of credit cards. …Read more

People these days are frustrated with the fact that it is harder and harder to find a good rewards credit card. Even people who have great rewards credit cards may find that their rewards are being scaled back as the credit card companies try to adjust to the changes that have taken place in the economy. This is certainly a sad thing to see from the perspective of the credit card consumer. However, there are some things that remain rewarding about credit cards even if you are not getting those traditional credit card rewards (like travel miles) that you would like to get.

One of the greatest rewards of using a credit card is the fact that the use of the credit card makes life so convenient. Here are just a few of the ways that every day life is more convenient when you use one credit card than when you use debit cards or cash: …Read more

People who are dealing with the situation of having no credit or poor credit may find that there are very few credit card offers that are open to them. This is especially true in the current state of the economy which has tightened up a bit and isn’t making so many offers to people without good credit. There are typically two types of credit cards that someone in this position might find themselves being able to get. One is the secured credit card and one is the prepaid credit card. Because of some similarities between the two types of cards, many people with poor credit think that they are the same thing. However there are some important differences between the two. Understanding these differences can help you to determine which type of card would be more appropriate for you. …Read more

Imagine that you get a credit card offer in the mail that says that you’re going to be given a fixed rate for your credit card. Does this sound like an offer that you should take advantage of? Maybe. Or maybe not. Whether or not a fixed rate on a credit card is a good deal depends on the specific terms of the fixed rate agreement as well as on what’s happening in the credit market at the time that the offer is made. Additionally, you should know that there are times when a fixed rate isn’t truly fixed which means that you might not benefit from going ahead and accepting the deal. …Read more

One of the things that couples are most likely to fight about (and even to get divorced over) is money. Smart couples will make sure that they discuss their financial histories, their spending styles and the money goals that they have for the future long before the wedding bells ever start to ring. But even those couples who do talk openly about money and who don’t fight about it often may find that there are little things that come up now and then in their financial lives which catch them off guard and cause problems in the relationship. One of those things is the situation of using rewards points on a credit card shared with a spouse. …Read more