Smart Money Advice – Part One

The good news, so far, is that the recession seems to be hitting the lowest it can go – and that means it’s time to go up. But the bad news is, it can all happen again unless we learn to be smarter with our banking habits and credit card usage.

Here are some tips that can help us get smarter about our money and debt:

1) One of the more clever bank loan tips is to find a bank that makes it easy to shift funds from savings to checking accounts. The reason? You can avoid more overdraft penalties and manage your payments better, especially when it comes to dealing with mortgage and other similar debt.

2) Another piece of smart money advice is to think about using prepaid debit cards. This way, you can directly deposit money into the cards, and there won’t be any overdrafts, since transactions will be refused if the card is empty. It’s similar to credit card usage, but with a better control factor. It’s the electronic equivalent to shopping with only the cash in your wallet. Watch out, though, as some debit cards offer overdraft capability. Just say no.

3) Make sure that your account is easy to switch. Pay your debts through as few billing sites as possible. The idea here is to make switching banks and credit cards easy, with minimal fuss. Once you switch, you won’t have to go through too much trouble in changing account information and routing with various companies.

Read up on more bank loan tips and smart money advice in Part Two.

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