credit cards

Got a credit card? Get another one.

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th-1In the past month or so I’ve had four credit cards compromised. Notice of the latest breach came via e-mail this morning: Some thieving bastard(s) purchased hundreds of dollars’ worth of stuff from Walmart.com and then tried to spend hundreds more at a different online company.

The other three credit cards weren’t part of the latest Target breach, in which as many as 40 million people had their data stolen. But that theft should help convince people to come around to my way of thinking: that you need at least two credit cards. Suppose you were on vacation or traveling on business and found your plastic didn’t work?

Which is exactly what happened to me: I’m currently in Phoenix, about to celebrate Christmas with my daughter and son-in-law. The card that got hacked is now kaput. What if I wanted to go shopping, or needed to pay for a van ride back to the airport?

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Buy yourself a merry little Christmas?

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thFewer of us plan to “self-gift” this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. Of the 6,415 U.S. consumers surveyed by the NRF, only 57% will buy themselves somethin’ pretty, compared to 59% in 2012.

Still, that’s quite a few folks assured of getting at least one gift they really, really like.

Nothing wrong with wanting to treat yourself, especially given some of the prices on Gray Thursday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and every other sale from now until Dec. 24. Not that every “sale” price is a good one; in fact, some aren’t really good deals at all.

But if you’ve been tracking prices, especially for bigger-ticket items like technology and appliances, then I can think of only one reason not to self-gift.

 

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8 personal finance lessons from “Gotterdammerung.”

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I spent six butt-numbing hours at the movies on Saturday, watching the Metropolitan Opera’s live broadcast of “Gotterdammerung.” Spectacle, pageantry, a buff and bitchin’ Siegfried who turned out to have a down-home Texas accent – it was a very successful day.

The only thing better than opera is frugal opera. In fact, the show didn’t cost me anything:

 

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How to stop getting credit-card applications. (Insurance ones, too.)

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It’s always fun to go through the mail after you return from a long trip. True, a lot of what’s piled up is junk mail and charitable solicitations, but you always hope for some good stuff.

Two months’ worth of envelopes were waiting when I got back from Alaska in mid-July. I did find a $39 check from Mr. Rebates (yay, cash-back shopping!) and a couple of paychecks from my Get Rich Slowly gig. But the haul was mostly, well, junk mail and charitable solicitations.

And credit card applications. Ten of them.

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