{"id":16673,"date":"2010-08-25T20:00:52","date_gmt":"2010-08-26T00:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/?p=16673"},"modified":"2010-08-25T20:00:52","modified_gmt":"2010-08-26T00:00:52","slug":"advice-from-visa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/","title":{"rendered":"Advice From Visa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s post is the third and final post in <a href=\"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/how-credit-card-companies-advise-you-to-use-credit\/\">my series on consumer advice from credit card companies<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Earlier this week, I examined <a href=\"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-amex\/\">Advice From Amex<\/a> and<a href=\"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-mastercard\/\"> Advice From MasterCard<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Today Is Visa&#8217;s Turn<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While Amex had a very simple site, and Mastercard had a really slick one, Visa has <a href=\"http:\/\/usa.visa.com\/personal\/using_visa\/personal_finance\/index.html\">buried their site under a menu<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 First, you have to click on &#8220;Using Visa&#8221;, and then you get many options, one of which is &#8220;Personal Finance Resources&#8221;.\u00a0 Then, they reference you to another site called<a href=\"http:\/\/www.practicalmoneyskills.com\"> &#8220;Practical Money Skills For Life,&#8221;<\/a> a site is created by Visa.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What They Get Right<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On the Visa.com site, I give the kudos for laying out the disadvantages of credit cards somewhat clearly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em> Potential higher cost of items (interest and finance charges, other fees) if paid back over time. <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Easy to spend beyond your means, resulting in financial difficulties. <\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> Not paying bill on time can negatively affect your credit history, making it more difficult to get a car loan, a mortgage, or even acquire car insurance. <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As far as I can tell, that is the closest any of the three major networks come to telling you that interest and finance charges are bad because you end up paying a lot more for your purchases.\u00a0\u00a0 They also link to annualcreditreport.com, the only official site for free credit reports.<\/p>\n<p>Over at their Practical Money Skill site, they<a href=\"http:\/\/www.practicalmoneyskills.com\/personalfinance\/creditdebt\/cards\/creditCardAct.php\"> do provide information on the CARD Act.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>What They Miss<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As with Amex, they fail to spell out how your FICO score is weighted.\u00a0\u00a0 Strangely, they boil it do to saying that: <em>&#8220;The 3 C&#8217;s of credit refer to character, capital, and capacity. These are areas the creditor generally looks at prior to making a decision.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Ok, that is about as vague as you can get.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure, they spell out what they consider character, capital, and capacity, but why beat around the bush?\u00a0\u00a0 Why not just s<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mastercard.com\/us\/personal\/en\/learningcenter\/creditwise\/understandyourscore.html\">pell it out like Mastercard does:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>According to Fair Isaac, FICO score factors are:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Payment History &#8211; 35 percent<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Amounts Owed &#8211; 30 percent<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Length of Credit History &#8211; 15 percent<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>New Credit (number of recently opened accounts, number of credit inquiries, etc) &#8211; 10 percent<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Types of Credit Used &#8211; 10 percent <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They also go in some humorous directions on t<a href=\"http:\/\/usa.visa.com\/personal\/student\/index.jsp\">heir site for advice for students.<\/a> Take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/usa.visa.com\/personal\/student\/credit_101\/credit_resources.html\">their page for credit card resources for students.<\/a> Their first suggested book is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0553283960\"><em>How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously<\/em> by Jerrold Mundis.<\/a> Sounds great, right?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It turns out the book is twenty years old, and according to the review posted on Amazon From Library Journal, <em>&#8220;Mundis flies a countercultural flag: debt is &#8220;wholly unnecessary,&#8221; and &#8220;bankruptcy is not an option.&#8221; <\/em>Again, just the kind of propaganda we would expect from a credit card company.<\/p>\n<p><em>(Note, as you can see from the comment below, Jerrold Mundis has informed us that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/How-Debt-Stay-Live-Prosperously\/dp\/0553382020\/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1\">his book is available in an edition revised in 2003<\/a>.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Visa still links to the older version on their site.\u00a0\u00a0 While it was outside the scope of this blog post to read all three books, Mr. Mundis points out that his book actually does take a highly critical stance on credit card use, not what I would have expected from a book on Visa&#8217;s suggested reading list.\u00a0 Thank you to Mr. Mundis for pointing this out.)<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Their other two recommendations are from 1995 and 1999, almost equally out of date.\u00a0\u00a0 What&#8217;s even stranger is that neither of these books seems particularly geared towards students, they are just general personal finance books from the self help section.<\/p>\n<p>But the winner for vague propaganda strewn advice is clearly their Credit Quiz.\u00a0\u00a0 It takes merely a glance to see that it is <a href=\"http:\/\/usa.visa.com\/personal\/student\/credit_101\/take_credit_quiz.html\">one of these quizzes that some bozo put together where they think all of the answers are A.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>1. When do you tend to pay your credit bills?<br \/>\n(a) When I receive them<br \/>\n(b) As close to the due date as possible<br \/>\n(c) I skip some payments<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>2. What portion of your credit card bills do you pay each month?<br \/>\n(a) The entire balance<br \/>\n(b) A good portion of the amount I owe<br \/>\n(c) Only the minimum payment<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>3. How much of the credit line do you owe on your credit cards?<br \/>\n(a) None, I pay my entire balance each month<br \/>\n(b) Less than half<br \/>\n(c) I have charged up to the limit on most of my cards<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>4. How much of your monthly income goes to pay credit card bills?<br \/>\n(a) Less than 10%<br \/>\n(b) 11%-20%<br \/>\n(c) More than 20%<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>5. Do you know your credit card debt?<br \/>\n(a) Yes<br \/>\n(b) I have a rough estimate<br \/>\n(c) I&#8217;m afraid to add it up<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The most bizarre thing is that they don&#8217;t tell you the correct answer is A, they just say<em> &#8220;Did you answer \u201cc\u201d to any of the questions? Then you might need to re-examine your budget, financial priorities, and credit obligations&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Actually, There are a lot of problems with this quiz.\u00a0 In the first question, I would say B is the correct answer.\u00a0 So long as you pay your bills electronically, and everyone should, I would always have the payment sent on the due date so the money stays in your account as long as possible.\u00a0 Why pay early?\u00a0\u00a0 Also, in number three, they pass up a clear opportunity to tell people to pay their entire balance in full every month, but instead allow the answer of owing &#8220;less than half&#8221; of your credit line to be sufficient.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 No, I didn&#8217;t really expect that they would tell you to always pay your balance in full, but it is interesting to see how close they actually come to doing so.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 The forth question, <em>How much of your monthly income goes to pay credit card bills?&#8221; <\/em>doesn&#8217;t really matter if you pay your balance in full.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>They do mention the CARD Act, AnnualCreditReport.com, and some of the drawbacks.\u00a0\u00a0 Nevertheless, their bizarre credit quiz, their FICO score omissions, and their worthless reading list force me to give this site a C.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s post is the third and final post in my series on consumer advice from credit card companies.\u00a0\u00a0 Earlier this week, I examined Advice From Amex and Advice From MasterCard. Today Is Visa&#8217;s Turn While Amex had a very simple site, and Mastercard had a really slick one, Visa has buried their site under a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.10 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Advice From Visa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Advice From Visa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today&#8217;s post is the third and final post in my series on consumer advice from credit card companies.\u00a0\u00a0 Earlier this week, I examined Advice From Amex and Advice From MasterCard. Today Is Visa&#8217;s Turn While Amex had a very simple site, and Mastercard had a really slick one, Visa has buried their site under a [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ask Mr Credit Card Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-26T00:00:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jason Steele\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jason Steele\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/\",\"name\":\"Advice From Visa\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-08-26T00:00:52+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-08-26T00:00:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/18331587d05ff4eaeee29fd913227597\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Advice From Visa\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/\",\"name\":\"Ask Mr Credit Card Blog\",\"description\":\"Just another WordPress site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/18331587d05ff4eaeee29fd913227597\",\"name\":\"Jason Steele\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/author\/jsteele\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Advice From Visa","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/advice-from-visa\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Advice From Visa","og_description":"Today&#8217;s post is the third and final post in my series on consumer advice from credit card companies.\u00a0\u00a0 Earlier this week, I examined Advice From Amex and Advice From MasterCard. 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