A while back I described The Balance Transfer Game – transferring a credit card balance from one card to another with a low teaser rate. The game had many downsides at the time, and has since gotten even worse.

According to Market Watch, recent changes will cause credit card balance transfer deals to cost you more in at least the following ways:

Transfer Fee Caps Have Been Eliminated

Fees have traditionally been a set percentage up to a capped maximum. With the cap removed, the more you transfer, the more you’ll pay.

Teaser Rates Are Rising

0% on balance transfers was the norm for a long time. Now, many offers are at 2.99% or higher. Paying no interest while the teaser rate was in effect was enticing, but non-zero rates are much less so.

Terms of Teaser Rates Are Shortening

Along with 0% offers, teaser rates traditionally lasted for at least a year. Now some are in effect for as little as 3 months. A shorter term makes playing the game less desirable and requires participants to play much more often if they hope to keep up.

Transfer Maximums Are Decreasing

The total amount that is eligible for the teaser rate is also coming down. This too effectively makes consumers have to play the game more often, since they might need to spread their current balance across multiple new cards to qualify for the teaser rate for the full balance.

The combination of these four changes means that if you choose to play the balance transfer game, you’ll probably be able to transfer less, you’ll see higher rates and pay a larger fee on what you do transfer, and you’ll have less time before the teaser rate gets reset to your much higher normal interest rate.

If the balance transfer game was a risky one to play before, it has gotten even worse as a result of these latest changes. There are still legitimate ways to play the game, but those fitting the criteria for success are dwindling in numbers. For the rest of us, using balance transfers is a practice best avoided, particularly when lower risk alternatives for consolidating credit card debt (such as the fixed-rate, 3-year P2P loans from Lending Club) are readily accessible.

Have you played the balance transfer game lately? Was it worth it for you?

I'll be honest. I am intrigued by the ShamWow.

Anything that can soak up that much liquid and have the capability of being used over and over and over again is okay by me. I never thought society would be able to top the paper towel. I stand corrected.

And the price can't be beat either. When I first heard the price of the ShamWow being $29.95, I was thrilled. Less than 30 dollars for a life-changing product is a steal. But then the affable ShamWow spokesman dropped the price to $19.95. And then he added another ShamWow towel for free. Even better, he had operators standing by to take my call. How could I say no?

I didn't, and now I have two ShamWows collecting dust in my garage, waiting for me to spill motor oil (not included). Those ShamWow people got me with their infomercial, and they got me good.

My ShamWow experience is probably like any number of infomercial tales of attraction, hasty decision, and regret. Infomercials have a strange, likable quality that gets the American consumer in the buying mood. But how do these interminable ads do it? It's not like they are well-produced pieces of television art. It's not like Mighty Putty keeps us alive. And it's not like we have to sit there and watch the entire infomercial through to the end. We can change the channel. We just don't.

The infomercial folks are doing something right because for every one person who guffaws at the audacity of hot dog bun warmer, there is another person out there dialing the phone. Whether it be a two-minute blurb on World War II DVDs or a 30-minute "Set it and forget it" marathon, infomercials have found a way into our hearts and our wallets. Here are some of their tricks of the trade.

Repetition

I cannot tell you how many garden hose infomercials I could recite to you word-for-word. Infomercials have a way of seeping into our consciousness, burrowing a consciousness cave, and hibernating until our payday. We simply cannot get some of them out of our heads.

They accomplish this feat by airing constantly during the same program. On some stations or at certain times of the day, you can see the same commercial three or four times during a movie or sporting event. And when you magnify that commercial into a two-minute sales pitch, it becomes much more noticeable, annoying, and - oddly enough - memorable.

Plus, the way that infomercials work adds a sneaky subconscious quality to the equation. They are designed to stick in your head by repeating themselves over and over again (especially those hypnotic phone numbers). They are the antithesis of vague jean commercials; they prefer to drive home their point so that you'll be sure to know what they're selling. Don't get down on yourself if you can't seem to shake products like the Bejeweler. That's the way the Bejeweler people wanted it.

Deals

If there is one thing that consumers like, it is getting a deal. It doesn't matter if the product is a piece of junk or not; deal hunters are just happy to be saving a few bucks. Hence, Big Lots.

Infomercials take full advantage of this flaw in humanity by fire-selling their junk to a laughable degree. No matter the starting price at the beginning of the commercial, that price will be hacked and slashed to pieces by the end. Infomercials have sneaky ways of adding value, too. They split the big payment into tiny, baby payments. They double the offer or throw in more free junk. They add expediency to the issue by claiming a "limited time offer."

And one of their favorite tricks is marking down prices until they get to that magical, mystical, hypnotic price of $19.95. What is it about that price that gets people scrambling for their cordless phones? You'd think the whole world was taught to "Act Now" whenever they hear those digits. In a sense, we were. Prices that end in odd numbers (like 99 cents, for instance) appear less expensive to us than do numbers ending in evens. Also, setting a price that is right below a commonly used currency, like the 20-dollar bill, helps us see exactly how feasible a purchase would be. We can't help that we bought three backpack purses. It is in our nature.

Meeting a need

Every great infomercial aspires to create a need for the product. Well, almost every great infomercial. We've yet to figure out the need for the Obama coin.

Creating a need and selling a product that meets that need is the infomercial calling card. You might think that your skin care is taken care of before you watch that Proactiv commercial, but by the time Jessica Simpson breaks out the photo album of her breakouts, you'll be throwing out the oxy pads and phoning in for a money-back guarantee Proactiv sample. Whether it is through personal testimony, visual aid, or real-world application, infomercials have their methods of convincing us that life isn't complete without a little more junk in our lives.

One of their methods for doing so is in their marketing. The brains behind the infomercials know what works to get consumers to buy certain products. They write the correct dialogue and create the optimal graphics. They know when to take a humorous, light approach to a new-fangled gizmo and when to go the traditional, serious road with a fancy doodad. The writers of infomercial copy have a way of making the most useless product seem valuable. Well, except for the Obama coin.

With these infomercial strategies in mind, hopefully you'll have a little more perspective next time the ShamWow commercial comes on TV, and maybe you'll even be able to resist that urge to "Act Now" no matter how great the price looks. After all, aren't two ShamWows enough?

Having personal information stolen is only the first step in a process that ultimately leads to a loss. Increasingly, thieves are not using data directly but rather turning a faster profit by aggregating data and reselling it on the thriving black market for such information.

Newsweek recently reported on this market and its alarming growth rates. Perhaps most surprising were the low prices offered for stolen data. As more and more data finds its way to the various online marketplaces, the surplus drives prices down. Bank information was reported to cost between 5 and 10 percent of the account’s value – so details about an account containing $50,000 might sell for $2,500. Detailed credit card information sells for about $45 per account.

Lower prices for stolen data may actually be a good thing for informed consumers. With so much information available, for so little money, thieves may be less interested in obtaining data that is well protected. Those people who do a reasonable job of protecting their personal information may be passed over by thieves who can profit more quickly by stealing from less savvy marks. Of course, those with large accounts may still find themselves worthy of a thief’s efforts as a result of the higher potential payout.

The Newsweek article also discussed how thieves are becoming more specialized and selling their portion of services online. Someone good at accessing accounts may partner with someone else skilled at laundering money. This trend towards specialization works well in legitimate businesses, so it should come as no surprise that criminals are exploiting it as well.

More transactions from theft to loss also raise the possibility of the theft being detected. If just one link in the chain is discovered, you could likely take additional precautions to secure your accounts.

Theft of personal information continues to be a profitable business. Increased efficiency and specialization have matured the process to the point where many legitimate businesses could probably learn some valuable lessons from the criminal enterprise. All of the precautions in the world will not prevent a determined thief from obtaining your data, but awareness and appropriate precautions help to limit your likelihood of becoming a personal information theft victim.

Most of the same factors that bring success in life also bring success in personal finances. It isn’t just that success in life brings financial rewards, but also that habits that induce success do so in all aspects of our lives, including our finances.

There are obvious factors that are widely believed to lead to all types of success, including intelligence, work ethic, and the like. There are other, less obvious factors that also play into the mix. As I’ve said many times before, those around you have enormous influence on your sense of “normal” and may drive many of your habits, financial or otherwise. This type of influence is what I’d like to discuss today.

For inspiration, I turned to two sources:

First is the new book, Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. In the book, the author downplays the importance of traditional success factors and investigates the ways that cultural influences and unique skills accumulate into advantages that lead to success. It doesn’t take much to extend his conclusions to financial success as well.

The second source was a CareerBuilder study whose results were reported by CNN. The study looked to see what effect birth order (firstborn, middle child, youngest, twin, or only child) had on careers and earnings. The results showed a surprising correlation between the two.

It can be disconcerting to discover that your lot in life is influenced by factors beyond your control, such as your birth order or cultural heritage. If these were the only factors in success, our lives would all be predetermined at birth or within the first few years of life. Fortunately, the factors that we can control also come into play. What this all means is that some people may need to work harder to overcome those factors beyond their control and others may inexplicably find success despite a mediocre effort.

How well does the CareerBuilder study predict the success of you and your siblings? Has success come easier (or harder) to you compared to friends or colleagues with different cultural upbringings?

During difficult financial times, people look to get more for their money. Some take that effort so far as to consider forgoing the use of traditional currency at all.

The Chicago Tribune recently reported that some Milwaukee neighborhoods were considering issuing local currency. The local money could be offered at a discount and would only be accepted by local merchants. This system is hoped to strengthen local businesses and thus the local economy. Whether consumers could get better deals using discounted local money at local stores or using regular dollars at national discount retailers remains to be seen.

Local currencies basically help to increase liquidity for what amounts to a bartering of goods and services. The trouble with traditional bartering systems is two-fold: first, it may be difficult to quantify one service in terms of the value of another. Second, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to find someone who has what you need and also needs what you have. To solve both of these problems, many bartering systems use some form of credits for buying and selling. The local dentist gets credits for services performed on the townspeople that he can then use at other local merchants. Whether it’s credits, local currency, or the US Dollar, all serve the traditional purposes of money: providing a store of value, widespread acceptance, and a medium of exchange.

There may very well be a more efficient solution to the economic needs of society than to use a federally issued currency like the US Dollar. Whether needs are more local or more global, situations often warrant alternative solutions. The proposed local currency in Milwaukee is by no means the first such experiment and will certainly not be the last.

What are your experiences with alternative forms of currency, whether local, bartering, or other?