Excellent Tips for Handling Secured Credit Cards

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Excellent Tips for Handling Secured Credit Cards
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• Lets discuss today several tips that can help
  you manage your secured credit card in the most
  effective way possible. Here are 5 pointers for
  secured credit cardholders.

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Dont spend more than your credit limit.

• Always remember that in secured credit card
  programs, the spending limit will depend entirely
  on how much security deposit you submit to your
  card issuer. So, keep that amount in mind. That
  way, you can determine the balance you can still
  use on your card. Moreover, it will be easy for
  you to assess whether or not youve reached your
  limit so that youll know when to stop charging
  transactions, like purchases or bills, on your
  card account. By doing so, you can avoid paying
  overdraft charges and other relevant penalties
  usually charged to consumers who have maxed out
  their credit cards.

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Settle your bills in full and on-time.

• That way, you can prevent your interest charges
  from ballooning out and getting way out of hand.
• To have enough funds to cover your credit
  payments, we suggest that you set aside money for
  your credit card bills as soon as you receive
  your monthly salary. In so doing, you will have
  just the right amount of cash ready to make a
  complete and on-time payment.
• You can also benefit from signing up for
  automatic payment arrangements with your bank. In
  such arrangement, the personnel of your bank will
  withdraw funds directly from your savings or
  checking account that it will use to pay off your
  credit card transactions. By relying on such
  service, you wont have to worry about missing
  out or skipping on your monthly dues.

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Always examine your billing statements.

• After all, this is the only way for you to detect
  if someone has gained illegal access to your
  credit card information and is using it to make
  unauthorized charges. Bear in mind that
  fraudulent transactions will not only inflict
  severe damage to your credit history. You might
  also be held liable for purchases you never made,
  if you wont report them to your card issuer,
  immediately.
• So to avoid complications, we suggest that you
  report unauthorized transactions to your card
  issuer, right away. That way, they can conduct
  thorough investigation on your claim to finally
  resolve your problem.

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Keep all your financial records intact.

• Never throw away receipts, proofs of purchases
  and even small financial records. This is because
  youll never know when youre going to use them
  for validating your card transactions as well as
  for disputing errors in your credit report.

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• Always remember that the key to the quick
  resolution of a credit dispute lies on the
  relevant paper-works that will be submitted by
  the cardholder. So, have your financial records
  ready just in case you might need them for
  cleaning up your credit report as well as your
  billing statements.
• Dont close your secured credit card when you
  qualify for an unsecured card program. This is
  because cutting one of your lines of credit can
  lead to the deletion of a substantial part of
  your credit history which might in turn pull your
  credit score down. So, keep your secured card
  account open and active as long as possible. Try
  charging small purchases and bills on your card
  and make sure that you settle them, as soon as
  you can.