Archive for February, 2011

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How and Where to Buy, Sell & Swap Unwanted Discount Gift Cards

It’s been a month since the holidays and you may have recently found some gift cards you received from your favorite relative or a coworker. When you first opened them, you said your “thank yous” and then they disappeared into your junk drawer in the kitchen because they were for stores you never, ever shop at. A gift card to a cooking store when all you do is eat Ramen Noodles? That’s not going to be of much use to you, is it? Thankfully, you don’t need to give away your gift that you would never use, as there are ways in which you can sell or trade that gift card for one to a store you may actually buy a product in! All you have to do is know where to look online and you can either sell the card for slightly less than its face value or you can trade it for something else. Let’s take a look at a few places where you can buy, sell, or trade those unwanted gift cards for something a little more “fitting” to your lifestyle.

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Plan for How to Get Out of Debt Fast

If you are like millions of other Americans, chances are that you are carrying around some debt on your credit cards. As of March 2010, U.S. revolving debt equaled $852.6 billion, 98% of which was from credit cards, and the average household carried $16,007 in credit card debt. That’s a lot of debt to have hanging over one’s head! With the economy the way it is, jobs being lost, and houses being foreclosed on, it’s a difficult time to try to get ahead and out of debt. But it’s vital that anyone who is in debt works to get out from underneath it, so I wanted to put together a list of things that could maybe help people get out of debt faster than if they were doing it without a plan. A long time ago I wrote a series called “The Start Digging Out Of Credit Card Debt Challenge” which you may want to check out in addition to what is to follow.

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What Is a Money Market Account?

There are many different places to put away your monetary savings; under the mattress, in a shoebox, in a home safe, buried in the backyard… or a bank. Most people put their money in a regular old savings account at their bank, either because they don’t know there are better options or because they feel safer having it down the street in that little brick building. If that’s you, you may be missing out on a (now only slightly, but in the past much better) interest rate on your savings, as there is an alternative that acts pretty much just like a regular savings account but gives you a higher return on any money you just have sitting around waiting for use.

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