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We are all concerned these days about credit card fraud and how relatively easy it is to steal someone’s details and run up thousands in debt under their name. It has happened to my partner and he happens to be one of the most fraud-aware people alive; so if it can happen to him it can happen to anybody.

This is going to be nice and quick; if you wish to take advantage of a 30 day free trial offer then visit CreditExpert and sign up - only takes about a minute and won’t cost you a thing. Leaving yourself open to credit card fraud will though.

Oh, when you sign up you can get a free credit report too - when was the last time you checked your status?

Popularity: 6% [?]

I have just been having a detailed look at quite a good website which specialises in credit card information; what cards are available/the best rates/ which cards are recommended by the experts. The thing that appealed to me first off is it’s impartiality; there’s no particular provider or card being pushed at you and I’m comfortable with that. So, if you are looking around for a new or replacement credit card at the moment you could say this site is as close to a brokerage service as you can get - and it’s free of course.

Credit Card Best  are what I would call credit cards specialists in that they offer listings and reviews of all the best deals available at the moment. Despite the current economic woes people still need access to credit - it is a standard requirement of life today - and when you consider that many people are not happy with the current interest rates on the cards they already possess they will be looking to transfer balances and change providers. Everyone seems to be doing this at the moment. You will find the information is categorized into which particular deal you are after:

* O% interest on balance transfers

* low APR/low intro APR offers

* cards with rewards schemes

* deals for those customers outside the USA  ( Canada and the United Kingdom )

* company cards

* cards for students; those with excellent credit; those with poor/no credit…

What you need to do is set aside a decent amount of time to adequately assess all the information provided here; they provide a run down of the top rated cards at the moment - they rate both good credit and bad credit cards - plus detail how to go about applying for the one you prefer. Take their advice though and apply online - it’s the easiest and quickest way to go about things - and the providers are all from the leading financial institutions.

 If you tried to do all this through reading the financial section of your newspaper it would take about a week; here you having everything you need to know all on one site. Like I said though, set aside plenty of time to look through the site and they suggest, quite rightly, make sure you read all the small print as well as any terms and conditions before you go ahead with an application.

Popularity: 12% [?]

If the current situation continues I guess you could answer yes to that question. Many Brit’s have moved across to Europe - France and Spain being the biggest attraction - but also many remortgaged their UK homes in order to make speculative investments in housing developments in countries like Poland and Bulgaria. A few years back a good number would have recouped their money plus profit but now most are sitting with a huge loss.

Interest rates have risen sharply across the board causing a marked drop in people borrowing to buy properties; add into the equation the inflation rate of 28% in countries such as Poland and the drop by 7% in house prices in Ireland and what you have is a very gloomy outlook for the near future.

Take Bulgaria for example: Irish and British investors are sitting with their money sunk in large new housing developments there with no hope of any purchasers just yet. Yes, the properties are dirt cheap by UK standards, but who wants to buy a property that will be worth less in a few years than what they originally paid for it?

Property owners in Spain are doing it pretty tough as well; thousands of expat homeowners there are finding it almost impossible to sell their properties for any kind of profit - you can also blame recent bad publicity surrounding corrupt developers around the Costa’s for this though.

The old adage  ’it never rains but pours’ somehow comes to mind; either prices are right up or sitting on the ground - those pulling the strings of the economy can’t seem to get the balancing act right.

Popularity: 9% [?]