
What is a frivolous credit card dispute?
A lender can dismiss a credit report dispute at frivolous, but you do have recourse.
Making good financial decisions enables people to get more out of life, and I’m happy to contribute to that endeavor.
— Poonkulali Thangavelu
Poonkulali Thangavelu is a senior writer at Bankrate, addressing credit card-related consumer protection and debt management issues. She believes that making good financial decisions enables people to get more out of life and is happy to contribute to others’ financial education. She uses credit cards extensively and sees them as a good financial resource to draw on — if used wisely.
Poonka has extensive journalism experience covering personal finance and business topics. She draws on her financial education and expertise and likes to simplify the subject matter to enable readers to make good decisions. While covering the mortgage market for National Mortgage News, she curated and edited a newsletter targeting the home-equity lending niche of the mortgage industry. In this role, she cautioned that home prices were getting out of hand in the period leading up to the 2006 housing market crash.
She’s contributed to multiple business and consumer-oriented outlets, and her work has been picked up by various national publishers such as the San Francisco Gate, Chicago Tribune and McGraw Hill, along with syndication on Fidelity, MSN, Nasdaq, Yahoo! and others. Her career includes a stint doing consumer market research for global advertising agency Ogilvy as well as experience as an equity analyst and writer.
It’s great to earn credit card rewards, but don’t go overboard with your spending in order to hit a welcome bonus or bonus category cap. I like the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express since it offers cash back on groceries, which I buy a few times each month anyway. The cash back rewards even offset the annual fee, so I find it worthwhile.
Making good financial decisions enables people to get more out of life, and I’m happy to contribute to that endeavor.
— Poonkulali Thangavelu
A lender can dismiss a credit report dispute at frivolous, but you do have recourse.
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Should you return an online purchase you got a refund for?
Paying off credit card debt could help raise your credit score and bring down your overall debt levels, making you a more attractive prospect to lenders and fetching a lower interest rate.
What happens to your credit card account if the bank issuing it shuts down?
Here’s what you should do if you run into credit card fraud while abroad.
You are generally not responsible for your spouse’s credit card debt unless you are a co-signer for the card or it is a joint account. But some state laws vary and you may be liable for this debt.
Credit card balances have been growing, with consumers piling on debt as prices rise. The most recent Fed data shows card balances continued to grow in January.
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The Citi Premier and Chase Sapphire Preferred are both solid rewards cards.
Here’s what you need to know about the best cards in this niche.