Here are a few lenders that offer refinance services, and I suggest to check as many as possible lenders to get quotes.  The more quotes you get from different lenders, the more possible you will find a lower rate which is essential for refinance’s success.

LendingTree

You can get reward points in three ways:

• Sign on bonus: $100 value.  after your first purchase, you get 10,000 points which can be easily redeemed to $100 cash
• Regular purchase: 1% cash back value.  for your regular purchase, Chase Sapphire Card rewards you 1 point for every $1
• Airfare purchase: additional 2% cash back value.  on top of 1 point for $1 rewards, you get double point rewards (2 points for $1) for airfares you spent if you book flights through their Ultimate Rewards Website.

Rewards points can be redeemed into cash (100 points for $1) or used to purchase merchandise through Chase’s Ultimate Rewards program.   As soon as you earn $25 worth of rewards, you are allowed to redeem, make Chase Sapphire Card’s rewards easier to be redeemed than Chase Freedom Credit Card.

• secured credit cards: the credit card debt you get is dependent on a collateral you put down with credit card company, it’s usually an amount of cash, and usually the amount of collateral you put down is the amount of credit limit you get.
• unsecured credit cards: the credit card debt you get does not require you put down a certain amount of collateral.   This type of credit cards is the general type of credit cards we commonly use.

This post shows major secured credit cards for you to choose

	Card Name	Features	More
	Applied Bank® Secured Visa® Credit Card	Prepaid Debit Card issued by Applied Bank; no credit line is attached. Operates on Visa Inc. network.	Regular APR: 9.99% fixed;CREDIT Bureau Reporting;Minimum $200 deposit required.
	Applied Bank® Secured Visa® Gold Card	Prepaid Debit Card issued by Applied Bank; no credit line is attached. Operates on Visa Inc. network.	Regular APR: 9.99% fixed;CREDIT Bureau Reporting;Minimum $200 deposit required.

Discover Online Savings: 1.85%

• rates are only valid if you deposit $500 or more

AmEx High Yield Savings Account: 1.85%

• no minimum balance requirement

Capital One Costco InterestPlus: 1.75%

• rates are only valid if you deposit $5,000 or more
• 10% quarterly bonus on interest earned

Ally Bank Online Saving Account: 1.7%

• no minimum balance requirement

Capital One Online Saving Account: 1.6%

• rates are only valid if you deposit $10,000 or more

Dollar Savings Account: 1.6%

• $1,000 minimum deposit

FNBO Direct Online Saving Account: 1.5%

• no minimum balance requirement

HSBC Online Savings Account: 1.35%

• no minimum balance requirement

Emigrant Direct: 1.3%

• $1,000 minimum deposit

ING Direct Online Savings Account: 1.3%

• no minimum balance requirement for Orange Savings Account

Capital One High Yield Money Market: 1.2%

• no minimum balance requirement

Citi Ultimate Money Account: 1.2%

• $100 minimum opening deposit
• Requires a checking account

Citi Ultimate Savings Account: 1.2%

• $100 minimum opening deposit

E*Trade Complete Savings Account: 0.5%

• no minimum balance requirement

(Rates updated on 10/26/2009)

A:  It will probably not.  This kind of behavior should fall into the “New Credit” section that is in your credit report, however, since the majority of this section is to figure out your interest to new credit, the more you are interested, the more negative to your credit.  Given this guideline, if you close new accounts shortly, that doesn’t affect your credit score negatively.

References: How Your FICO Credit Score is calculated from myFICO.com.  You may also find out your FICO score by visiting here.

FICO Scores are calculated from a lot of different credit data in your credit report. This data can be grouped into five categories as outlined below. The percentages in the chart reflect how important each of the categories is in determining your FICO score.

These percentages are based on the importance of the five categories for the general population. For particular groups – for example, people who have not been using credit long – the importance of these categories may be somewhat different.

Payment History

• Account payment information on specific types of accounts (credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts, mortgage, etc.)
• Presence of adverse public records (bankruptcy, judgements, suits, liens, wage attachments, etc.), collection items, and/or delinquency (past due items)
• Severity of delinquency (how long past due)
• Amount past due on delinquent accounts or collection items
• Time since (recency of) past due items (delinquency), adverse public records (if any), or collection items (if any)
• Number of past due items on file
• Number of accounts paid as agreed

Amounts Owed

• Amount owing on accounts
• Amount owing on specific types of accounts
• Lack of a specific type of balance, in some cases
• Number of accounts with balances
• Proportion of credit lines used (proportion of balances to total credit limits on certain types of revolving accounts)
• Proportion of installment loan amounts still owing (proportion of balance to original loan amount on certain types of installment loans)

Length of Credit History

• Time since accounts opened
• Time since accounts opened, by specific type of account
• Time since account activity

New Credit

• Number of recently opened accounts, and proportion of accounts that are recently opened, by type of account
• Number of recent credit inquiries
• Time since recent account opening(s), by type of account
• Time since credit inquiry(s)
• Re-establishment of positive credit history following past payment problems

Types of Credit Used

• Number of (presence, prevalence, and recent information on) various types of accounts (credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, mortgage, consumer finance accounts, etc.)

Also check out service review of credit reporting/monitoring and identity theft services

Please feel free to share with us any of your unhappy experience with these agencies so that this list can be maintained constantly useful to readers.

Credit Reporting/Monitoring

myFICO® is the consumer division of Fair Isaac, the company that invented the FICO® credit risk score that lenders use. Starting in the 1960s, Fair Isaac sparked a revolution by pioneering credit risk scoring for the financial services industry. This new approach to lending enabled financial institutions to improve their business performance and expand consumers’ access to credit. Today Fair Isaac’s FICO® score is widely recognized as the industry standard for lenders.

myFICO® offers Score Watch service to consumers, the service includes

• delivery of FICO score regularly
• send warnings when FICO score change
• send notification when customer is qualified for certain loan

Equifax is public listed company, member of S&P 500 index.  On Consumer service side, Equifax offers credit management products like 3-in-1 Credit Report and Score Watch help consumers make informed decisions when making purchases, securing loans, paying for college educations, and managing their personal finances.

Identity theft is the fastest growing white collar crime in America. One in five families have been affected by this epidemic. Identity theft protection products like Equifax’s Credit Watch Gold™ with 3-in-1 Monitoring continually monitor consumers’ credit files and alert them of potentially fraudulent activity like a new credit card application that they did not initiate.

CreditReport.com provides free credit reports and credit scores to consumers in a secure, online environment. Its Credit Monitoring service alerts customers to changes across all 3 of their credit reports while Credit Score Tracking notifies customers to significant changes in their credit score.

Identity Theft Protection

As identify theft is the fastest growing crime in United States,  protection services emerge in response to proactively protect consumers from this crime.

TrustedID’s®  innovative flagship product – IDFreeze® – stops identity theft before it ever happens. Secured from identity theft by their 15 points of protection which includes protection for children, seniors, and medical records.  In addition, TrustedID’s® also rolled out a new product Identity Threat Score™ on Oct. 27, 2009, which provides a gauge of an individual’s risk of identity theft by assessing millions of records on hundreds of public and private databases. This information is then analyzed for patterns that could indicate if the customer has been or is about to be a victim of identity theft.

IdentityTruth.com provides identity theft protection services starting from $10/month.  They use innovative technology to offer customers the earliest possible notificationTM of identity misuse and threats. IdentityTruth is a privately held, VC- funded company headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Investors include Argonaut Ventures and Stata Venture Partners.  They are offering customers the chance to test our services on a risk free basis before making a purchase.

ID Watchdog offers patent-pending technology that continually scans thousands of credit, social security, DMV, medical, public records and other databases.  They search for fraudulent activity and notify you of anything suspicious.

Also included in the free trial offer of ID Watchdog Plus is a free ID Theft Profile.  This cross references thousands of databases, checks for any instances of previous ID theft and is valued at $19.95.

LifeLock provides a proactive identity theft service, specializing in the prevention of identity theft rather than the reporting of it. LifeLock was founded in 2005.

Also refer to my previous post: Credit Score Q&A

Trying to address this question, I create this post to summarize the pros and cons of each car insurance program, this post will be maintained continuously as new information flows in to keep in up to date.

The information source of this post will be based on comments from consumers who actually used certain car insurance program or industry experts.   Follow the links below to get a quote and compare for your individual case.

Geico, well known brand in the industry, overall good reputation, prices may be higher than eSurance, but remains competitive in the industry.  Its website allows customers to change policy online conveniently, it also offers good customer service and road side assistance.

21 Century, part of AIG, the big insurance company that got government support.  21st Century is inexpensive if you fit into low risk profession, but price rockets if you don’t.  21st Century has so far proven to be the best deal in car insurance.  Easy form to fill out, low cost, fast customer service.

Allstate, the company is usually compared with Geico since in many cases customers get same quote from the two companies (do they use the same model to assess the risk profile of individual?), but Allstate’s customer service may need some improvement, according to some customers.  Allstate offers “Choice Auto Insurance” which claims to keep rates from going up due to an accident and to fully replace a totaled car with a brand new one.

Comparisons: one consumer recommended to use Geico if you want full coverage.  If your profession is a low risk one, 21st Century may be the best choice for its low cost and good customer service.  If you want to prevent your rates from going up due to a car accident, you may consider Allstate who offers “Choice Auto Insurance“.

It wasn’t easy to pick a winner, since both programs are so similar and so much depends on the details of your specific situation. But in our tests, TurboTax, the long-standing sales leader, came out on top. While it won’t make doing your taxes fun, we found it generally more user-friendly, easier to navigate and easier to understand.

Source:

Testing Tax-Preparation Software

Other Tax Preparation Softwares:

CompleteTax
Tax$imple

The two types of rates are interchangable, here is how to convert one to the other.   Before you calculate, you need to set a method of compounding, which is how many pieces you want to slice a year into.  Daily compounding slices a year into 365 days, then periods of year is 365.  Monthly compounding slices a year into 12 months, then periods of year is 12.  With this in your mind, you can start converting.

Supposing you want to calculate daily rate for the year of 2009 which has 365 days total.

If you have APR available, here is how to calculate APY:

APY = (APR / periods of year + 1) ^ periods of year – 1

For example, for APR 2.08%, and you want daily APY,

APY = (2.08% / 365 + 1) ^ 365 – 1 = 2.10%

Converting APY to APR is a little more complicated, say If you have APY available, and need APR

APR = ((1 + APY) ^ (1/periods of year) – 1) * periods of year

For example, for APY 2.10%, and you want daily APR,

APR = ((1 + 2.1%) ^ (1/365) – 1) * 365 = 2.08%