BoatU.S. WorldPoints Platinum Plus Visa

Card issued by Bank of America, N.A. (USA)
Earn 1 point for every net retail purchase dollar spent and redeem your points for travel, merchandise, gift certificates, and cash§
Access to the MyConciergeSM service, a unique personal assistance service**
Absolute fraud protection against unauthorized use, online and offline
No annual fee

A flexible and unique rewards program that puts you first. Select from cash back, travel, merchandise or personal services that are yours for the picking.

BoatU.S. Platinum Plus® Visa® Cards.

• No annual fee
  
• Absolute fraud protection
  
• Online access and 24-hour service
  
• Access to the MyConciergeSM service, a unique personal assistance service
  
• Introductory 0% Annual Percentage Rate (APR)† for Cash Advance Checks and Balance Transfers through your first twelve billing cycles.* (subject to a 3% transaction fee, no less than $10)
  

DID YOU KNOW?

	Are you ready for retirement? For most hard working individuals, retirement doesn’t seem like it is close enough. But, for those that realize the amount of money needed to be well off through the later stages of life, there is nothing more important than pushing retirement a little farther away. Many individuals go through the same routine. They start out with high hopes of having a large nest egg. They work years and years, always making enough to pay the bills but not enough to really put aside. Although this is very important and they know it, there simply is not enough to do this with. How Can You Make Sure You Have Enough? The US government says that individuals retiring today should have a nest egg of at least $500,000. That is a lot of money. There are many things that you can do to get to that point, if you know how. Here are some things that you can do to find yourself ahead of the money game for retirement. • If you are young, invest in a financial planner. Unless you know the skills of saving and investing, it is one of the best investments you can make to hire an individual to help you to plan and manage your money. They can help you to know where to put your money, how much you need to put into savings and how to plan for everything along the way too. • The retirement plans. Many companies offer retirement plans, for example the 401K. Here, you put a little bit away out of each paycheck and often your company does the same thing. This allows you to contribute to your savings before taxes come out of the paycheck. And, most of the money is tax free until it is used too. • Want to have more money for retirement? Then pay down your bills now and put away your credit cards. When you use credit cards, you’ll be spending quite a bit more than if you just used cash. Don’t have the cash to pay for that extravagant purchase? Then don’t buy it. You have to plan for your retirement. Whether the government will help you or not, if you plan to live the lifestyle you are living now, or more, then you’ll need a good nest egg to call your own.

Many people who are suffering from extreme financial troubles due to debt have successfully made use of credit counseling services. While it is often spoken of in the same breath with debt negotiation it is really quite different. If you work with a credit counseling service you will have your own personal credit counselor who will help you to get out from beneath your debt. They can help get your debts consolidated so that it is easier for you to make your monthly payments. You will only be paying one lump sum each month and it should be smaller than the sum of the payments you were making previously.

If you are sick and tired of bill collectors calling you as well as terrified of the collection agency letters you keep receiving, then credit counseling just might be for you.

There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with credit counselors though. First of all, you need to be able to tell the good from the bad. Not all of these services are reputable. Millions of people have been taken in by credit repair scams, don’t you let yourself become one of these victims.

Any offer that tries to sell you a quick fix should be discarded immediately. There is no overnight fix for bad credit. It is going to take some time before you are back on top. You want to look for reliable companies that have been accredited by Consumer Credit Counseling Services.

Once you have found a good service you will have to make an appointment so that you can meet with them. The counselor will need documentation of all of your debts, you need to show the counselor everything because that is the only way they will be able to work out a solid repayment plan for you.

Now it is up to the credit counselor. They will then let your creditors know what is what and explain to them that you are having problems and they are there to fix it. They will work with the lenders to come up with a plan that you can live with, one that comes with smaller payments and lower interest rates.

If you want, most credit counseling services will allow you to send them a lump sum payment that they will make sure gets to the creditors each month. This is what is known as a debt management system. While this is a handy tool, these services have been known to be late occasionally with the payments and this is something that you want to avoid. Late or missed payments will do even more damage to your credit report. What you need to do to avoid this problem is really check out the service and find out what dates they plan on mailing out any payments.

A credit counseling service that is running a scam will ask you for huge fees up front before they do anything at all whereas a reputable company will only charge you about 14 bucks a month. That is one of the best ways to tell the true services from the greedy scammers.

While dealing with credit counselors may not be perfect, if you are in serious trouble due to your debt and you just can’t deal with it anymore, it might just save your life.