The best tip for credit card use is to pay your bill in full each month. Many people have been asking me what technique they can use to ensure they do this each month.

The answer?

A wise way to use your credit card is to treat it as if it was a debit card—keep your receipts and immediately record each transaction and then subtract the total from your checking account as you do so.  Then, at the end of the month you simply write a check for that total (that you have already subtracted from your checking account balance), thereby paying your credit card bill in full.

What makes up your credit score according to FICO?

35%=your payment history
30%=how much of your available credit you are using (the lower the better)
15%=the length of time you have had credit
10%=the duration of time from your last credit application (the longer the better)
10%=the mixture of credit types you have and use (better to have both installment accounts (such as a car loan or mortgage) and revolving accounts (such as credit cards) instead of just one or the other.

Copyright © 2009 by Mara Rogers of Secrets for Money http://www.SecretsForMoney.info

Photo Credit: This photograph “commerce bank card 2″ by the Consumerist. For more of this Photographer’s work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/consumerist/ and http://www.flickr.com/people/consumerist/

For more “Secrets” to making money, saving money, and managing your money go to the Archives at Secrets For Money http://www.SecretsForMoney.info/blog

Some of the tips may seem more radical than others, but they all have in common that they save you money!

Start conquering the ‘urge to splurge’ when you are trying to build your financial wealth!

* Switch to online banking and pay your bills online. This saves time, stamp money as well as trips to the Post Office. If you pay 10 or more bills per month this new habit really starts to save you money over time. And the cost of postage stamps keep going up. Just make sure that your bank offers online banking for free as many banks do nowadays.

* Try online grocery shopping and delivery service such as Peapod (Peapod.com) for example. This saves you time and money because your groceries are delivered to you, and you will tend to “stick to your shopping list” and not buy impulse purchases. And if you typically shop with children you can then avoid the hard-to-resist “Mommy/Daddy can I have this?” every time you walk into a supermarket.

* Stop buying books, DVD’s, and CD’s—go to your library and rent them for free. You can also cancel your magazine and newspaper subscriptions if you make it a fun ritual to go and read your favorite magazines and newspapers at the library where there are many to choose from.

* Cancel the Cable package and stick to the basic TV/cable package.

* Make only one ATM visit per week.

* Clean your own house, mow your own lawn, wash your own clothes—stop hiring others to do so.

* Stop buying paper towels—re-use old kitchen sponges.

* Water-down fresh fruit juice and fruit juice concentrate to make it last longer.

* Make your own popcorn and take it to the movies, but make sure to go to a matinee when the ticket prices are less. Better yet, invite a group of friends over to your home for a rented DVD and homemade popcorn for more savings rather than going out to dinner and a movie with friends.

* Take your lunch to work and pack a thermos of coffee instead of buying your lunch and coffee out.

* Replace ultra-expensive beauty products with less-expensive versions.

* Skip a few of those pricey beauty salon visits and color your own hair with some of the high-quality but much less expensive products you can buy at a well-stocked Drug Store or Beauty Supply Shop.  And in between hair-style appointments for a haircut that styles your hair, forgo paying to get your hair “trimmed” instead buy a pair of haircutting scissors and trim your own hair.

Copyright © 2009 by Mara Rogers of Secrets for Money http://www.SecretsForMoney.info

Photo Credit: This photograph “Fresh Fish In The Supermarket” by Mdid. For more of this Photographer’s work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdid/ and http://www.flickr.com/people/mdid/

For more “Secrets” to making money, saving money, and managing your money go to the Archives at Secrets For Money http://www.SecretsForMoney.info/blog

“My Grandmother used to say ‘never let failure go to your heart, and never let success go to your head.’ “—Will Smith

Today’s “Secrets For Money” is wisdom gleaned from some very famous people that never gave up, people who know the secret that there is no such thing as failure.

What we might perceive as failure oftentimes leads to our greatest success. It is just that we must harness resilience, persistence and adapt, in effort to reach our goals.

Here are some reminders of this—that even when things look bleak there is opportunity.

“It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up.”
—Vince Lombardi

* Michael Jordan was cut from his High School Basketball team. Jordan once said, “I’ve failed over and over again in my life. That is why I succeed.”

* When asked by a reporter did he feel like a failure after hundreds of unsuccessful attempts to make a lightbulb.

To which Edison relied: “I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those seven hundred ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work. I will find the way that will work.”

* Albert Einstein did not speak until he was 4-years-old and did not read until he was 7. His parents thought he was “sub-normal,” and one of his teachers described him as “mentally slow, unsociable, and adrift forever in foolish dreams.” He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.

* Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley in 1954, after one performance. He told Presley, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, son. You ought to go back to drivin’ a truck.”

* Leo Tolstoy flunked out of college; Tolstoy was described as “unable and unwilling to learn.”

* After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, read, “Can’t act. Can’t sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.”  Fred Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.

Way before building Disneyland, a newspaper editor fired Walt Disney because the editor felt Disney “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

* Winston Churchill failed sixth grade. He then lost every public office election until he became Prime Minister at the age of 62. Churchill later wrote, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up.”

Copyright © 2009 by Mara Rogers of Secrets for Money http://www.SecretsForMoney.info

Photo Credit: This photograph “Chicory flower” by aussiegall. For more of this Photographer’s work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/ and http://www.flickr.com/people/aussiegall/

For more “Secrets” to making money, saving money, and managing your money go to the Archives at Secrets For Money http://www.SecretsForMoney.info/blog