Credit Score Range

Americans have been addicted to plastic credit cards for decades; making it easier for the criminally inclined to exploit their decades-old weaknesses.

Credit and technology companies, however, are looking for ways to go beyond plastic – with each company taking a stab at what it thinks will click.

Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Google and newcomer Bling Nation are all fiddling around with smartphones. Countries like Japan have already proven that the system works, and today’s tech-savvy Americans are more likely to receive these changes well.

Citibank is poised to release Citibank 2G cards, which will use “smart” chips in lieu of magnetic strips and will allow a user to have simultaneous access to lines of credit, debit and reward.

All of these options, however, are moot if Americans themselves will stubbornly stick to traditional plastic cards.

Familiarity and reliability are two strong reasons for most folks to keep using plastic, while fraud liability usually falls on the bank that released the card.

Industry-wide changes need to be implemented before credit cards are totally phased out. That will be up to the aforementioned companies whether they will dedicate a significant amount of their resources to the shift.

In the end, though, the average Jane and Joe will at least have the opportunity to test and pick out what works.

Unsecured mailboxes make for very easy and very low-risk targets for theft, as one Spokane Valley neighborhood found out.

“I got a text message from my neighbor across the street saying somebody’s been through the mailboxes,” says local resident Staci Manos.

“Some people had, we noticed like IRS papers that were there, a lot of open and ripped up mail, some of it was like credit card offers.”

These are the kinds of documents that County Sheriff’ Sergeant Dave Reagan does not want falling into the wrong hands.

“They either steal your outgoing checks when you pay your bills, which have your name and your account number on them and they can either be washed and that check cashed or they can take that information and make their own counterfeit checks.”

He adds that it will be the long-term damage to a person’s credit score that will do the most harm, not money lost as banks tend to return money lost through identity theft.

Reagan recommends that people rent a P.O. Box or buy a locking mailbox to prevent mail theft.

“The prevention is a whole lot easier than the correction, if they get their hands on your credit,” he adds.

Spokane Valley is located in Washington and is home to 89,755 residents as of 2010.

The presidents of four British Columbia (B.C.) research universities in Vancouver are calling for the help of the provincial Liberal government regarding the poor financial assistance for post-secondary students. Should the local government heed their call, education would be brought closer to the students who would have wanted to pursue post-secondary education but are reluctant because of the cost.

George Iwama (University of Northern British Columbia), David Turpin (University of Victoria), Andrew Petter (Simon Fraser University) and Stephen Toope (University of B.C.) said that they are more concerned about the interest rates of the student loans which are too high at 2.5% above prime. In fact, it is the highest interest rate on student loans in the country.

The presidents did not offer any amount on how low the interest rates should go but they pointed out that interest on student loans was taken on 2009 in Newfoundland-Labrador as mandated by their government.

Majority of post-secondary students are reluctant to pursue their education because they are shocked upon seeing the price. Studies also show that poor families – more so for those who are on the lower end of credit score scale – overestimate the cost while underestimating the benefits that education can offer.

Obviously, British Columbia’s approach has to be changed if it still want to impart the benefits of post-secondary education to the group of people or families that do not care much about education because of the cost it entails.

According to the presidents of the four universities, they have already submitted their recommendations to the B.C. Advanced Education Ministry and are now being reviewed.

The chairman of the B.C. branch of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), Zachary Crispin, added that the recommendations included the elimination of interest on student loans as it is the quickest way to make some radical changes to student financial aid in British Columbia.

But aside from the interest rate issues, the CFS also calls for the restoration of the student grant program which was eliminated in 2004 and a reduced tuition fee.

The recommendations have also been confirmed by Advanced Education Minister Naomi Yamamoto saying that her ministry is currently conducting a review on the changes the group wanted.