You look at your paycheck week by week, and you find that you’re getting your wages garnished.  Unfair?  Probably not, because there’s a good chance that you owe that company money.  How would you like it if you were to lend someone money, and they didn’t pay you back?

Regardless, let’s get off the rant here.  If your state deals with garnishment of wages, there are some things that you can do to stop it.  If you think that they are garnishing your wages illegally, you’ll be able to have a ground to stand on.

If you really do owe the wages, you will find that you may not have a ground to stand on.  But, here are some things that you can do, when you’re looking to stop garnishment.

#1 Don’t avoid it

If you’re afraid that a company is going to garnish your wage, then there is something that you can do.  What you’re going to find out is that most people ignore their debts.  They don’t answer the phone, and they don’t show up in court.  If your employer receives a notice that they have to garnish wages, they will have to do it with no questions asked.

#2 File a “Claim of Exemption”

Let’s say that a company garnishes your wages, and you find that you can’t even live on a day, by day basis.  If this is the case, where you don’t have enough money to live, you will find that you can file a form called a, “Claim of Exemption.”  This is going to tell the courts that you need money to live everyday, and you simply don’t have enough.

If you do decide that you will want to go this route, you will simply go down to a local courthouse, and request that you want to file this paperwork.  When you show up in court, you must prove with income statements, bills and more that you can’t afford to live.

It’s hard to stop garnishment

I will tell you the truth.  It’s going to be hard to stop a garnishment.  Your best bet is to suck it up, and pay it off in full.  What you’re going to find out is that it’s going to be costly to get a lawyer, and you may owe double in the long run.  This is something that you probably don’t want.

In the end, while you can try some of those tips above, if you owe the debt, you’re going to have a hard time getting away with stopping it.

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Trying to pinch a few pennies this holiday season? Chase wants to help with its “Ultimate Rewards” rewards program! Through the program, Chase is kicking off its annual holiday promotion to give you rewards and outstanding value. As a “Chase Freedom,” “Chase Sapphire” or “Ink from Chase” cardmember with Ultimate Rewards, you can now start taking advantage of merchandise redemption discounts, opportunities to earn bonus points, and a Best Buy gift card bonus offer. These include the “Give a Gift, Get a Free Gift Card,” giving you a free Best Buy gift card as a bonus – a $10 gift card for 5,000 points or a $25 gift card for 10,000 points from November 14 through December 20 when you participate in Ultimate Rewards and redeem 5,000 points or more in a single transaction.

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There was an announcement coming from the Bancorp Bank Payment Solutions Group. This is a division of the Bancorp Bank, which in turn is a fully owned subsidiary of The Bancorp, Inc. The announcement was about the new collaboration with Net1 Virtual Credit card Inc, which is a fully owned subsidiary of Net 1 UEPS Technologies Inc. This collaboration would be offering VCPay a prepaid card application for virtual payment. This will be designed for those transactions which are dubbed by Card Not Present in the mobile payments market. The VCPay application which has been launched a month ago has been distributed to thousands of smart phones with a greater adoption expected in the future too.

Meanwhile Metro PCS is turning out to be the first distributor of Net1 for VCPay. It has millions of subscribers who would be offered the VCPay application.

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Credit cards with low interest rates are the way to go if one wants to keep the cards for life.  It is not difficult to get carried away while using a card and before one realizes one would have run up a hefty bill to pay up.  It’s a different matter altogether if one can pay up the whole bill each month without having to carry forward any balance to the next month.  But if that is not possible then one would end up in serious trouble and end up paying huge sums as interest on the credit card debt.  This is a vicious cycle as one would end up paying a lot more in cash in order to repay the debt in full and the time taken would be much longer than one would expect.

So the next logical step for someone who has a lot of credit card debt to clear is to do a 0% balance transfer and make the switch to a new card.  But that again has to be done with some caution.  It would be worthwhile to look at various card companies and the options before zeroing in on a card that would be best suited for the individual.  By making this switch one could avoid the interest for a year or more.  For instance, if one had to switch over to the Barclaycard Platinum card (with a 16-month BT Visa) one would have at least 16 months to clear off the balance which is pretty decent, before the interest creeps in.  16 months is a long period for one to get hold of the situation and tackle the debt problem.

However, if the debt that is incurred is huge it might take longer to clear it off and the debt in the card could remain even by the end of the interest-free period.  In such cases on would be faced with two options – to either move the debt to another card with 0% balance transfer or to use a lifetime balance transfer card.  With the first option one will need to pay another balance transfer fee at 3% interest and with the second option the cards offer a low rate of interest for the entire term until the debt is cleared.  So, one could relax with the knowledge that the interest would remain low until the whole amount is cleared off.  This would save one from switching cards constantly and paying the balance transfer fees every single time.

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Twenty-one per cent admitted that they had given their PIN to a friend and 3pc to a work colleague. Of those in relationships, 64pc admitted that their partner knew their PIN number. Nine per cent of those interviewed had forgotten their PIN in the past when trying to buy something.

Although 11pc of those surveyed had been the victims of identity fraud in the past, the study suggested that poor choice of PINs was indicative of a general lax attitude towards credit card security in general. Just over half of those with multiple credit cards had the same number for every card, despite the obvious security risk.

The study comes at a time when personal information is more freely available than ever. With millions of people in the UK using social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, it is becoming ever more easy to obtain data such as birthday dates.

Farhad Farhadi, personal finance expert at MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, said: “I was surprised to see just how many people have their PIN number as their birthday.

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