The Target Credit Card.

 finances, household  No Responses »
Feb 142013
 
Target

Target (Photo credit: kevin dooley)

I like Target. I prefer it over Walmart. I don’t do a lot of shopping, but if I am shopping, Target is one of my main stops…which brings us to the Target Credit Card. The card comes with a grace period on payments (if you pay in full, then you aren’t charged interest) and no annual fee (take that American Express). In addition it offers a 5% discount on every purchase made at Target using the card. You read that right – not a measly 1 or 2% on some purchases – but across the board, 5%!

Is that all? Well not quite. Don’t forget that when you use the Target credit card online you’ll get free shipping and handling on your purchase and extra time (+30 days beyond the usual) to return your items. Yeah, it is a little like Amazon Prime without the subscription fee.

Now, there is one drawback to this whole Target credit card thing – and that is that you’ll be tempted to spend more time at Target. But for those who can resist the urge to splurge, the Target credit card makes a lot of sense and can be a real money saver.

I think Target is onto something great and hope that they will continue to improve their services. They are a brick-and-mortar store that is evolving with the times – but will they go far enough and fast enough? I hope so…

Just in case anyone from Target is pondering how they might go farther and faster, here are a few friendly suggestions:

  • Integrate Receipts – This would be huge. Make that line item for a $102.50 purchase at Target clickable and when I click on it show me the individual items I purchased. In this way I can keep better track of what purchases are household, pharmacy, clothing, automotive, entertainment, grocery, and so on…
    • Along with this could be an option to get rid of paper receipts. If I use a Target card let me set an option that determines if a paper receipt is printed or not on the site (or at a cashier). Not only is this good for the environment but it saves me the annoyance of carrying around that annoying piece of lengthy paper.

Ummm…I guess that is only two recommendations, the card is nearly that perfect. What is your favorite credit card? Are there other features that Target’s card is missing?

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Goodbye Quizzle, Thank You CreditKarma.

 finances, productivity, web  6 Responses »
Apr 052012
 

Update: Scrap this post entirely and read my post on eating crow and why Quizzle is actually worth your time here.

In 2010 I wrote about free credit card reporting services Quizzle and CreditKarma. At the time I recommended using them both – and while that still can’t hurt, I have to

Image representing Credit Karma as depicted in...

Image via CrunchBase

say for me personally it is time to say goodbye to Quizzle and depend more fully on CreditKarma. Why? Well, a few quick reasons:

  1. Quizzle is freemium. They let you refresh your credit card score once every six months…CreditKarma lets me refresh it all day if I want. Quizzle charges for extra refreshes – CreditKarma is nice and free.
  2. Okay…really, that is the big reason, but I’ll also throw out there that I’m not particularly impressed with Intuit (which owns Quicken which owns Quizzle), in fact I’m downright disappointed. They’ve neutered a leading innovator in online money management (Mint) through failing to develop it further[1] and their products, generally, over significantly overpriced (yikes, QuickBooks!). I don’t expect to see industry leading innovations from Intuit – they are a big behemoth that takes its time turning, like so many established enterprises – I generally prefer to look to the quick and nimble companies.[2]
  3. I don’t need Quizzle’s emails in addition to CreditKarma’s. I already have information (and email) overload…so this is an easy way to trim down the fat.

So, if you want to keep checking two credit reporting services – keep Quizzle…but to simplify life, I find CreditKarma to be more than sufficient.

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  1. [1] Yes, yes, some features have been added…but I’ve almost stopped using it since better tools have been released… ↩
  2. [2] Thanks to Pete who pointed out that I was wrong about the relationship between Intuit and Quicken Loans…while they share branding this is a licensed relationship rather than a sub-entity, etc. ↩

CreditKarma offers Free Credit Reports and Credit Monitoring, Oh My!

 finances, productivity, services, technology, web  No Responses »
Jan 052012
 

Credit is a mysterious and oftentimes frustrating entity that exists out there and yet affects us.

Image representing Credit Karma as depicted in...

Image via CrunchBase

  • If you don’t use credit you won’t have a credit score, which means you won’t be able to get credit when you need it.
  • If you use credit but go through a tough patch or for whatever reason get some dings on your credit you’ll experience skyrocketing interest rates and a rampant tightening of available credit.
  • If someone happens to steal your credit card – physically or virtually – you may not know until significant funds have been expended.

For a long time it was very difficult to even know what your credit score was…sure you could send away for one in the mail, but it cost money. Only in recent years did government regulations require the credit agencies to provide consumers with a copy of their credit report for free annually (if they requested it).

Thankfully, as in so many other industries, a technology company has managed to turn the established industry on its head overnight…Yes, I’m talking about CreditKarma.

CreditKarma is a nifty little site I’ve been using since whenever they came out – ohh, might have been a year or two or three ago. I joined b/c they offered free credit scores. Now granted, this is a little different from a credit report. This tells you what your credit score is (numeric) but not all the nitty gritty on whom your lenders are, how much you owe them, and so on….but for most purposes this is plentiful and unlike Quizzle (owned by Intuit/Quicken) you can refresh your score as often as you want for free.

Now they have made available free credit monitoring. Used to be you had to pay between $5-$20/mo. to get credit monitoring to make sure someone wasn’t stealing your identity or that false charges weren’t being added to your report. Now CreditKarma has made it free.

CreditKarma has a bunch of other nifty features…but instead of me describing them all why not just go sign up and try it out for yourself? Its 100% free and it takes less than five minutes from start to “hey, that is my credit score and I’m getting free credit monitoring.”

 

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I Mint my Own Money!

 productivity, software, technology  1 Response »
Jul 192008
 
Mint Logo

Image via Wikipedia

[Update: Since Intuit acquired Mint the rate of innovation seems to have decreased significantly...I still use it occasionally, but not nearly as much as in the past. Unfortunately, I haven't found a totally pleasing replacement for Mint...I use YNAB to do things right now.]

Haha. Got ya! Not that kind of mint. I use the web 2.0 application Mint to manage my finances – and you should too. This is the sort of service I have been hoping for for years! What is it? So glad you asked…

Mint is a website that allows you to centralize your financial management (and its free). Once you sign up you enter your login information for your various banks, credit cards, investments, etc. Mint does not permanently maintain this information – rather they establish a read only connection to your financial instituions and then throw away the keys (login information). This allows them to pull the latest informaton from your accounts – but they can’t make deposits or withdrawals nor do they even have the ability to find our your username/password since they throw it away. So, it’s a fairly safe system[1].

Once you add your accounts Mint offers a number of neat features including:

  • Creating graphs and charts of your income and expenses. Allowing you to drill down into the areas where you are spending the most money and find unexpected drains on your financial resources.
  • Monitor spending from month to month and automatically create budgets (or create one manually) that reflect your average spending.
  • Receive notifications when bills are coming due, when new deposits are made to your account, or when rates on an account change.

Mint is a must have. It will make your life easier and help you manage your finances more wisely – I know it has helped me!

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  1. [1] It is worth noting that while many people are afraid of putting their banking information online, in my opinion we regularly engage in much more risky behavior. For example, handing that credit card over to a waiter who walks off with it. Talking about financial details over phone lines – which are unencrypted. Receiving financial information through the postal mail – unencrypted. Any site worth its salt (including Mint) uses encryption to protect your information – this is much more than can be said for many traditional technologies. ↩