You may not have checked your credit score lately, but there’s a good chance someone else has.  If you have applied for a mortgage or a loan — or even received a credit card offer in the mail — someone accessed that three-digit number to help determine the amount you can borrow and the interest you’ll owe on it.
So what goes into this all-important score? And how can you make sure you’ve got a good one?
The term credit score usually refers to your FICO score, a number based on a …

Introduction to Dropshipping
Welcome to Joe Money’s “Drop Ship Crash Course” written by dropshipping and affiliate marketing guru Ryan Moran.  In these short lessons, we’ll cover the essentials to drop shipping on the internet, which is a major strategy that many use to make money on eBay and from their own e-commerce stores.
Drop shipping is a topic that one can spend months studying, so this course will only begin to scratch the surface of the drop shipping industry. However, it will help you get an understanding of how the process works …

Talk is cheap — at least, it is until the phone bills arrive.
On average, consumers shell out a little more than $1,300 a year for phone services (roughly $70 a month for wireless plans and $40 a month for a landline), according to Nielsen, a market researcher. And while many phone customers have grown accustomed to paying such sums, they could easily be paying half as much — without affecting their ability to stay in touch.
“We are a society of over-phoned,” says Sam Simon, chairman of the Telecommunications Research and …

Getting a handle on the household finances will be a defining theme for many consumers in 2009. But with a litany of different accounts — credit-card accounts, savings and checking accounts, not to mention IRAs, 401(k)s and money markets — to complicate our financial lives, that goal may be difficult to attain without a little help.
Fortunately, getting your financial house in order for the new year is just a mouse click away. A slew of new web sites allow users to organize and track various accounts from one location. These …

We are under constant media barrage about checking our credit report and we all know it’s important to have a high credit score. With the new legislation, it’s possible that a great credit score will be more important than ever. But does the average Joe really understand what goes into the calculating of a credit score? I know I didn’t until I started researching it.
I was surprised to find out that your debt to limit ratio has a 30% impact on your credit score. Only your credit history has a …

The Oracle of Omaha became the world’s richest person by adhering to simple but critical tenets. Here are his rules for smart living and savvy investing.  Last year’s market madness didn’t just flush away $7 trillion in wealth.  It also washed away a lot of investors’ confidence and left them stumped about the best position to take now.  “Somewhere between cash and fetal,” quips one pessimist.  In such downbeat times, let’s consider a dose of optimism, wisdom and insight: the basics as taught by that perennial investing Yoda, Warren Buffett.
For …

Your car insurance rates are based on a few factors you can’t readily change — your sex, age, marital status and where you live — and many that you can — your credit scores, what you drive, how well you drive and how much coverage you buy.  Here’s how to get the best deal.
First, let’s review the basics. Details vary from state to state.

Liability insurance pays for injuries and property damage caused by a crash if an insurance adjuster determines you were at fault. It does not cover your injuries …

The cost of a car is a lot more than the sum of its payments. It’s the gas, the repairs, the insurance, the parking. It’s the lost opportunity to do other things with your money as well.  Your homework should involve a lot more than a test drive. In fact, it starts with simply doing the math. Consider this: If you’re 25 and buy a $20,000 car rather than a $30,000 one, and sock away that 10 grand in a Roth individual retirement account at 7%, you’ll have $160,000 to …

As we try to get our finances under control in this frantic market, experts say long-term disability insurance can be more important than saving for a rainy day or retirement, especially for young, single workers. No one wants to believe they’ll ever become disabled, let alone disabled for an extended period of time. But according to the Insurance Information Institute (III), at age 35, people have a 45% chance of being disabled for 90 days or longer before their 65th birthday. And among those people, there’s a 70% chance of …

Gas prices have been terrorizing people’s wallets for many months now, but some people are hit harder than others.  According to the National Petroleum News, there are currently 167,500 retail gasoline stations in the United States serving people on a daily basis.  But, this map from GasBuddy.com shows that gas prices not only vary from state to state, but often differ greatly between counties and regions.  So why do some Americans pay more to fill up their vehicles?
There are several factors that influence the price of gasoline.  First, it depends …