HANDLE WITH CARE. Used indiscriminately, your credit card can easily become your liabilityMANILA, Philippines - Contrary to popular belief, a credit card is not your free money. It's a piece of plastic that promises to pay your purchases at a later date. Think of it as your loan – your utang. Before you get one, it's highly recommended that you establish your own emergency fund first.
Now, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but not all credit-card companies want you to pay your loans as soon as possible. Sometimes, they want you to delay your payment so they can charge you a higher interest rate. Some companies may view you as a money machine instead of as a lovely customer. Sadly, some – not all – are there purely for the money. Gasp!
What's a 20-something like you to do, then? If some credit-card companies don't make the effort to disclose the fine print or reveal your privileges, then read up. It's for the good of your sanity and your bank account balance:
1. You can fire them if you want to.
You're still your credit-card company's boss. So if you've been a loyal and responsible customer, you can actually call them up and negotiate your current interest rate. You can tell them about your clean track record – you pay in full and in time – and nicely ask them to lower your interest rate.
Hey, you can even tell them about their competition's current rate! You can say that your new card can offer a lower rate and can even give you freebies such as a free Despicable Me! Minion keychain or a free meal at a nice restaurant.
Tell them you'd really like to keep their card, but if they can't offer you better terms, you might be “forced” to switch. It doesn't hurt to try this.
2. They need you more than you need them.
Competition in this credit-card market is tough – this is why a lot of them display enticing advertisements and give out lots of freebies, right? This is why you get spam emails on credit-card applications. This is why a well-dressed credit-card representative gives you brochures and even asks for your contact information right on the get-go.
That said, if you just do your part and be a great customer, you can negotiate for almost everything!
Yes, you can negotiate your card's annual fee. You can even have it waived.
Yes, you can negotiate a late fee, provided that you've been paying in full and in time every time.
Yes, you can even change your due date to the date of your convenience.
3. The teaser rate isn't going to be permanent.
Getting a credit card is like getting married. At the early stages, you're so happy and so satisfied with your spouse – everything about him is perfect! His hair, his abs, and even his cute dimple on his cheek. After 6 months has passed, then, boom! You think his hair is baduy, his abs are only one-pack, and his cute dimple looks like a worm.
This is the teaser rate that credit card companies give you if you “sign up now.” In the beginning, you'll enjoy low interest rates. After 6 months, when you're already in a fixed contract, they'll increase the interest rate to immense amounts! (Naturally, you can't protest because this is included in the fine print that you never bothered to read because it made your nose bleed).
4. You're allowed to pay only the minimum charge so that your interest will be maximized.
Let's say you have a balance of P 15,000 on your credit card right now.
You can pay only 1% up to 5% of that, because this range is computed as the minimum payment. Therefore, you can just pay as little as P 150 to P 750 only.
Ayos! Deal! You already paid the minumum due so you've paid everything, right?
Wrong.
If you pay only the minimum amount due, the remaining balance will be carried over to the next statement.
So, if you've paid P 750 right now, you still have a loan of P 14,250, yes?
No.
You will also be charged another interest on the remaining balance.
The more minimum amount you pay, the higher your total payment will be in the future.
If you can afford to pay the total balance in full and on time, then go! Enjoy – you can even take advantage of the freebies!
If you can't, then no! You'll get stuck in a difficult debt cycle.
Think twice before you swipe that credit card. Your sanity and wallet will thank you for it.
credit: LIANNE LAROYA
When traders get greedy they may not even be aware of it. It often manifests as looking at your open profit on a trade and thinking about how much you’ve made and about how much more you ‘could’ make by keeping the trade open. Here’s the danger with this line of thinking: Open profit is just that, “open”, and you have not secured any profit from a trade until the position is closed. Unless you have closed a profitable position out, you really have nothing but the potentialfor profit. Traders often confuse the feeling that they get by looking at their open profit on a trade as ‘real’ money that they already have ‘in the bank’. Ignoring the fact that open profit is much different than ‘secured’ profit is the root cause of why traders do things like move their original profit target further away as price approaches it, which typically results in a much smaller profit than their original target would have brought them, or no profit at all. If you are greedy in trading, it has the ironic effect of making profits harder to obtain.
Many traders struggle with fear at some point, and they also get abused by it. Let me explain…
Hope is dangerous for traders. It can be hard to understand this one, because ‘hope’ is usually thought of as a very good thing, and it is in most instances, just not in trading.
Regret is the feeling that traders often feel after a losing trade or a missed trading opportunity or perhaps after not making as much money as they hoped they would on a trade…possibly due to greed and fear, as we discussed above. Regret can slowly destroy your trading account……
Since we are human, we are all susceptible to the same types of emotional 
