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Free FICO Score

The Fair Issac Corporation created the FICO score, and they are the folks that run myFICO.com. In fact, myFICO.com is the only place you can go to get your official credit score.

myFICO.com gives you your official FICO credit score as reported by Equifax when you sign up for a free 30-day trial of Score Watch. The sign up process is quick and easy. You will have to provide your name, address, date of birth, and social security number so that myFICO.com can pull your credit report and credit score. You'll also have to provide a credit card. You won't be billed unless you decide to keep the Score Watch past the 30-day free trial

A week before you free 30-day trial is up, they will send you an email notifying you that you credit card will be charged unless you cancel Score Watch. If you decided to cancel your free 30-day trial before you get charged, it's easy to do. Simply click on the "Support" tab at the top right of the main myFICO.com screen. This will take you to a list of help topics, the first of which provides the simple steps to take to cancel your subscription.

You can get a free estimated credit score at Quizzle (no credit card required).

Swap A Gift => Lets U Get Rid Of Unwanted Gift Cards

Swapagift.com is the world leader in acquiring unwanted gift cards. You can get cash for your unused gift card online or immediately through their preferred merchant list.

Swapagift also offers its discounted gift cards exclusively at GiftCards.com.

Credit Scores Demystified #video

Products Made To Fall Apart. The Cost of Walmart!

At our newly opened Slave Mart, I saw shoes for $4.99. So when they wear out in a few months, you buy new ones!

Cheapness -- and the decline in durability that has accompanied it -- has triggered an astonishing increase in the amount of clothing we buy. In the mid-1990s, the average American bought 28 items of clothing a year. Today, we buy 59 items. We also throw away an average of 83 pounds of textiles per person, mostly discarded apparel, each year. That's four times as much as we did in 1980.

Since 1995, the number of toasters and other small electro-thermal appliances sold in the U.S. each year increased from 188 million to 279 million. We buy more than 2 billion bath towels a year, up from 1.4 billion in 1994.

In a paper [PDF] that came out last year, three business professors illustrate how inducing manufacturers to cut product quality enhances Walmart's competitive position. "Because lower quality products are usually cheaper to produce, it is often argued that discount retailers induce lower quality in order to drive down prices. Our model suggests, however, that the competitive and bargaining position effects provide incentives to induce lower quality regardless of changes in production costs," the authors write.

Walmart is also a master at getting shoppers to buy more than they came for. It employs all of the techniques that have been shown to spur "unplanned buying," according to a recent study [PDF] in the Journal of Marketing. The study found that large stores that promote the concept of one-stop shopping and can only be reached by car generate the most impulse buys. Marketing messages that evoke abstract shopping goals are also highly effective at inducing people to put more stuff in their carts.

According to the study, the least amount of unplanned buying occurs when a shopping trip involves multiple stores, each with a specific product focus, and the customer arrives on foot or by mass transit -- in other words, when you shop at small neighborhood and downtown retailers.

You Should NOT Accept Credit Cards | #entrepreneur #smallbusiness

When merchants sign their service contracts, they also have to agree to a series of draconian security rules, under which they are automatically liable to the card companies if the card companies suspect fraud or lax security procedures.

Here is the full story: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/credit-card-firms-they-dont-just-steal-from-cardholders-20120109

4 Cheapo XMAS Gifts

1. Roll of postage stamps
2. Hand rolled bees wax candles from a craft store
3. Put together your own food basket. Use decorative baskets or tins you have collected over the years
4. Print you own coupons on your computer such as a free dinner at restaurant of you choice or a free body massage (for your significant other)

7 Ways to Have More by Owning Less

These are excellent web sitres and fit with my local living philosophy. Neighbors helping neighbors is what made America strong!

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Cancel Credit Cards You Don't Use and Your FICO Score Rises!

Clark Howard and Carmen Wong Ulrich have a deep fascination with FICO scores. Too bad they mean less and less to bankers these days. Banks look at your take home pay and your total credit limit. They assume that if you get the loan, you will max out all your credit cards the next day! So you should keep your income to total credit limit as high as possible. Since most of us can't increase our incomes substantially in the short run, the best way to do this is to cancel cards you no longer use!

This is what is going to happen to the US economy

This can and will happen only if people throw in the towel on US Treasuries. The fact that the global elite and China still love US bonds makes me skeptical. But readers should be aware of this possibility.