Filed under: Credit , Banking From Kickstarter to Crowdtilt , crowdfunding is all the rage these days as a method for financing large undertakings and projects, especially those of an artistic variety. But what if instead of convincing others to help you make the next great mumblecore indie film, you could use crowdfunding to deal with something both more mundane and more pressing … like your credit card debt

Filed under: Home Depot , American Express , Retail , Best Buy , Personal Finance , Shopping Gift cards have made holiday shopping a whole lot easier for millions of people. But they also raise a big question: Who should profit when people don’t use up their gift card balances?

Filed under: Credit Cards It ain’t pretty and it never is. No one likes to hear that their bank, credit card issuer, transaction processor, or any of the merchants they’ve used who issue plastic has been hit with a security breach. In the latest hack attack, which was revealed Friday, third-party credit card processor Global Payments ( GPN ) said that it believes up to 1.5 million credit cards issued in North America may have been compromised , with security thieves potentially stealing “Track 2″ information such as the..

Filed under: Credit , Credit Reports It’s not just political philosophies that define the differences between Republican-leaning “red states” and Democrat-leaning “blue states” — and some of those differences may surprise you. Blue states, for example, have higher average gas prices — but because red state citizens own less-efficient vehicles and drive them more, high gas prices are hurting them to a greater degree. The states with the most teen pregnancies are mostly among the conservative red, whereas those with the least are..

Filed under: American Express , Bank of America , Charles Schwab , Credit Cards New research from Bankrate.com finds that one in four Americans owes more in debt than they have in emergency savings. Another survey, this one from the Consumer Federation of America and the American Savings Council, found that nearly half of us believe we aren’t saving enough to provide a “desirable standard of living” in retirement.