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CEO & Co-founder
Andrew started his career at a Chicago hedge fund and quickly noticed a problem: the people who most needed financial guidance weren’t getting any. He co-founded Money Crashers in 2009 to fix that with free, plain-language money education. He’s been interviewed by MSNBC, CBS News, NBC News, and Fox News, and featured in Forbes and US News & World Report. Off the clock he plays ice hockey and tennis, and meditates. Andrew holds a bachelor’s in economics from Brown University.
Putting part of your car down payment on a credit card can earn rewards, and a single charge can cover a new card’s sign-up bonus requirement. Ask the dealer how much it accepts by card, and whether it adds a fee, before you negotiate. Then pay the card in full, or interest will erase the rewards.
When a card account has a long, clean payment record, joining it as an authorized user can put its years of history on your credit report in one step. Before anyone adds you, confirm the card’s issuer reports authorized users to the credit bureaus, past history included. If it doesn’t report them, you gain nothing.
Gas pumps, hotels, and rental counters often hold more on your card than you’ll end up spending, and on a debit card that hold can lock up real money in your checking account for days. Hand over a credit card wherever holds are common, so the hold ties up credit instead of cash.
On a simple-interest car loan, the common kind, every extra dollar you pay stops the interest on that dollar for the rest of the loan. A precomputed loan sets its interest up front, so paying extra barely dents it. Check your contract for the interest method and any prepayment penalty before you pay ahead.
A medical credit card’s no-interest deal is often deferred interest. Leave any balance when the promotion ends, and you owe interest on the whole bill, back to the day you charged it. Before you sign up at the front desk, ask whether the provider offers its own interest-free payment plan.
Dave Ramsey’s Baby Steps put your money goals in a simple order, and the debt snowball’s quick wins keep you going. But when Baby Step 2 tells you to pause investing, keep contributing enough to your 401(k) to collect the full employer match. A match of 50% or more that’s yours to keep beats the interest a faster payoff saves.
Cell phone protection on many credit cards covers theft and damage to every phone on your wireless bill if that card pays the bill. Check your card’s guide to benefits, move the bill to a card that has it, and drop the carrier’s plan unless you need lost-phone coverage or your phones cost more than the card’s per-claim cap.
The most concrete benefit of getting out of debt is the payments you stop making. Add up what you pay each month on every credit card and loan you plan to pay off, then multiply by 12. That’s the raise you get once the last balance is gone, and it’s money you’ve already paid tax on.
Stop typing your real card number into shopping sites. Get a virtual card number from your card issuer’s app, your phone’s wallet, or a service like Privacy.com, and give stores that instead. A store that never has your real number can’t lose it in a breach.
Debt that keeps growing comes from too little income or too much spending, and each needs a different fix. Add up one month of essentials, minimum payments included. If they come to more than your take-home pay, you need more income or lower fixed costs. If your pay covers them, the problem is spending.
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