This guest article was provided by Odysseas Papadimitriou, the Founder of CardHub.com—a website that helps people get the best credit card deals.

Do you pay your credit card bill in full each and every month?  Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but no matter what, you’re probably aware that it’s best for your financial health to do so.  Such credit card use exhibits consumer responsibility and can save you a ton in interest.  Again, you probably know all this.  What you might not be aware of is the importance of credit utilization in the minds of the credit scoring powers that be or the fact that paying your bill in full might not be enough to garner a high credit score, particularly if you use a No Preset Spending Limit (NPSL) credit card or charge card.

You most likely aren’t even sure exactly what credit utilization is.  Credit utilization is a ratio of the credit you use as compared to the credit available to you.  Credit utilization ratios are calculated individually for each of your credit cards as well as for all of them collectively and included in your FICO score, the most widely-used credit score.  It’s therefore important to limit your monthly spending to around 40% of your available credit, unless your credit line is relatively small.  For example, there’s not much of a difference between spending $80 and $180 when your credit limit is $200, but there’s a significant difference between spending $4,000 and $9,000 when your limit is $10,000.

But what happens if your credit card doesn’t have a credit limit, or at least you think it doesn’t?  What happens when your credit card company won’t tell you your credit limit?  How can you maintain low credit utilization then?  Better yet, how can credit scoring agencies even calculate credit utilization without credit limits?

Therein lies the problem with No Preset Spending Limit credit cards and charge cards.  Whether you think these cards don’t have spending limits—as many people do—or you know that their limits are simply determined on a month-to-month basis and not conveyed to consumers or the major credit bureaus, it’s obvious that they throw a wrench into the credit scoring process.  However, the way in which they do so is perhaps worse than you might imagine.  According to our NPSL Card Study, issuers either don’t report limits to the credit bureaus for their NPSL cards or they report various arbitrary proxy limits.

At this point you might be asking yourself, ‘Since NPSL cards do have actual spending limits, why don’t issuers just report them?’  Great question.  Ostensibly, the reason issuers don’t report NPSL cards’ actual limits is because they are variable, changing based on your spending and payment history as well as trends in the economy.  However, the main reason issuers are so secretive about NPSL card limits is that they want to propagate the myth that NPSL cards have no limits.  It’s what makes them money; it’s what helped Visa Signature credit cards, World MasterCard credit cards, and the charge cards from American Express and Chase become some of the most popular financial products for people with excellent credit.

Unfortunately, when credit limit information is conveyed misleadingly to the credit bureaus, it can lead to misleading credit utilization ratios, which in turn might lead to a misleading credit score.  To further complicate matter, the extent of any potential credit damage is often difficult to predict because it depends on both the breadth of your credit history and the exact way issuers report their NPSL cards’ limits, which varies.

NPSL cards therefore make it difficult to maximize your credit score and might actually end up causing damage.  Given that they don’t bring any unique benefits, their use should be avoided.  Luckily there are a plethora of excellent options, like rewards credit cards, that can serve as replacements.  So compare all of the non-NPSL choices available to you and get a credit card for excellent credit that will allow you to maintain low credit utilization and a high credit score.

Jessica Ward is a full-time freelance writer and adoptive mom to two wonderful children. She writes to support her parenting/adopting habit. For more information see www.jessicaward.me or for frugal family tips see www.thepennywisefamily.com or @jessc098 on Twitter.

Many parents know the feeling—your school may not be meeting your child’s educational needs, or you do not feel they are safe there, but you don’t have the resources for a private school  either. What options are available to parents?

We’ve faced this in our household, our youngest, adopted from east Africa arrived with a language delay but a high IQ—she might not reach her full potential entering Kindergarten this year. Our oldest, also very high IQ, has learning disabilities that interfere with her classroom functioning, but she isn’t low-functioning enough to qualify for special services. In sixth grade, she risks missing out on critical life-skills (organization, time management) that may affect her success for a long time.

My family is a resourceful bunch and mired in education. My in-laws both work for school districts (a teacher and an administrator) my mother is a school psychologist, and I was home-schooled until the ninth grade. (And I like to think I turned out all right.)

There are still options for parents who have concerns that their neighborhood public school just isn’t hitting the mark.

Private schools. Yes, I know, not in the budget. Many schools still offer scholarships for children. Do some research and contact schools that might work.

Change public schools. Some districts may allow you to waiver your child out of a district and into a district with programs that better fit your child’s needs.

Charter schools, or alternative learning environments. Washington State (where I live) doesn’t allow for charter schools, but our district does have an alternative school available for grades 3-12, and two districts offer online school, which is ultimately what we choose—we waivered our kids out of our home school district and into a public online school.

Home schooling. This can be done with or without a curriculum program.  Home-educators can order “school” from a provider, or attend co-operative groups to share teaching and grading duties with other families, or design their own program to meet their state’s educational requirements.

Un-schooling. Un-schooling is perhaps the earliest form of schooling, encouraging children to learn from their natural environment. It’s gaining popularity as a learning program and works for many kids with attention or behavior challenges.

Supplementing. Keep the public school, but add on programs from the local library, church, synagogue, 4-H, scouting or other organizations.

Don’t be limited—you can mix the strategies above to meet your child’s individual needs. Private and alternative school programs aren’t all full of preps or thugs, many cater to children who are kinesthetic learners or who need more workforce-oriented learning opportunities instead of the classic “reading, writing and arithmetic.”

It is possible to meet your child’s young educational needs without sacrificing their future college fund.

On that subject…
It isn’t too early to be shopping for scholarships and academic programs to give your child a financial kick-start into college. While many scholarships aimed at children under age 13 aren’t published (for privacy reasons), there are some directories available. My daughters and I plan for these scholarships each year and make a list of which ones to apply for. This list caters to elementary and middle school students. http://www.finaid.org/scholarships/age13.phtml

Also, many programs exist for children to begin college early. Here in Washington we have a program called “Running Start” which allows high school juniors and seniors to attend community college classes along with, or instead of their high school classes at no charge.  I benefited from two years of free tuition this way, and a direct-acceptance agreement to any state university after I completed my Associates’ Degree.

Bottom  line: Don’t give up! A little planning and frugality now can give your child the education he or she deserves and will give you the peace of mind that you need as a parent.

Finally, somebody tells it like it is:  longer-term certificates of deposit are bad investments because they make savers "lose out to inflation." Elizabeth Ody, from Bloomberg News, arrived at this conclusion after combing through the latest report from Market Rates Insight.

Many purchase CDs to lock in a fixed return that is also FDIC insured.   Unfortunately, you also are insured that your investment will not keep up with inflation - the rising cost of living – in effect, providing a negative true return.

Elizabeth went on to say that inflation "was 2.11 percent in February, surpassing the long-term CD rate of 2.10 percent for the first time since October 2008". Read Elizabeth's full article here.

The following is a guest post by the NerdWallet.com team. NerdWallet is a website that helps you compare and find low interest rate credit card offers. The Nerdwallet team of finance bloggers and experts write for Forbes Moneybuilder Blog, Huffington Post, the Christian Science Monitor and many other outlets.

Do you remember the CARD Act of 2009? If so, then you know it was created to protect American consumers from being held hostage by credit card companies.  This Act has done a good job in some respects, but there are some dirty tricks that you should be aware of before truly claiming victory.

Surveys show that the average American household has nearly $5,000 in unpaid credit card debt, most of whom are searching for ways to pay off these debts cheaply. If you’re like most, you have probably thought of transferring over your balance from higher interest cards to a card with a low introductory interest rate, but should you?

The Use of Balance Transfers Before the CARD Act

Let’s say you have the average household credit card debt of $5,000, and last year you responded to an offer from First Friendly Bank for a 0% APR on a balance transfer credit card. Likely you decided to do this (after reading the fine print of course), thinking that you could pay off your debt before the intro period ended and the higher 15% interest rate kicked in.

So you went ahead and got the credit card and transferred your balance over. You felt confident that you would be able to pay off the $5,000, and even used the extra room on the credit card to pay off an accumulating pile of other bills that was worth $1,000.

Eager to get rid of some of your debt, you decide to send in $500 as a first payment and it is applied to your balance. Now, you likely won’t see this noted on your statement, but your balance transfer is accounted for by your bank as a separate balance from your other bills, and the two incur their own separate interest rates.  Now, what will the bank do to split the $500 you sent in between the two balances?

Just think of these two balances as two different bowls.  The bank would previously have put your entire $500 payment in the balance transfer bowl.  During the pre-CARD Act era, the other bowl wouldn’t have seen any of that money until the other balance transfer bowl was completely taken care of. So you would be charged the full 15% interest on the $1,000 that you spent until you fully paid off the $5,000 from the other balance. If it ended up taking you a full year to pay this off, you would have generated $160 worth of interest on your $1,000 bowl. Then if it took more than a year, that $160 would continue to grow.

Are Balance Transfers Safer Post-CARD Act?

President Obama signed credit card legislation in 2009 that changed the way banks have to behave in situations like that above. Now, these credit card companies are required to apply payments made by consumers to the bowl with the higher interest rate first, no matter how many bowls you have and which have the biggest balances. Of course, this doesn’t mean that it is 100 percent safe – nothing ever truly is. There is a catch within the fine print so that only payments greater than the minimum payment have to be applied to the bowl with the highest interest. So they are still given the freedom to put minimum payments to any of the bowls they wish to.

If you’re only able to pay the minimum payments on your charge cards, all of those payments will be going to the balance transfer bowl. This means that you are going to continue paying off your low interest or 0% credit card balances while the purchases you make still get charged the higher APRs. This is why it is important for consumers to do everything within their power to pay more than just the minimum payment monthly.

Other Dirty Secrets to Know About

Other than the interest rates that are being charged by these banks and the methods they use for the balance transfers, financial institutions are charging upfront fees for transferred balances. A little over a year ago, these fees were typically around 3%, which means you’d pay about $150 upfront for your $5,000 balance transfer. Today, many of these transfer fees are even higher at 5%, which is $250 for a $5,000 balance transfer.

Then there is the problem with professional credit card schemes that banks have been employing since the CARD Act was established. These professional credit cards are none other than business credit cards, which aren’t protected by the Act. So if you decide to get one of these business cards for transferring your balance or in order to take advantage of deals on introductory purchase APRs, the bank has the freedom to put the payments you make on low-rate balances, while charging you the max interest rates from other balances.

If used responsibly, credit cards can indeed be a great way to manage money, but it’s important to keep an eye on the fine print. The only way that these credit cards will work favorably for you is if you are knowledgeable about mitigating the fees that you have to face at each turn, and if you are able to make full payments each month. Dealing with unnecessary interest fees can quickly trip you down a dark abyss, so try to avoid them as best you can, perhaps look at personal loans with fixed rates and payments as a more predictable alternative.

Image courtesy of  Steven Depolo.

Well, ok.  That's a stretch, but the reality is you don't have to throw thousands of dollars at your wedding to make you happy.  In fact, scientist and statisticians have not found a clear correlation between how much you spend on your wedding and how loving and successful your marriage is.  What they did found is that one of the top reasons for couples to separate is money problems.  Perhaps overcharging your credit cards or overleveraging yourself with debt are not the right steps to get your marriage started on a good foot.

Who needs a lavish wedding?  Apparently the royalty do. The Royal Palace, Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth II (on the Prince William side) and Kate Middleton's parents coughed up a bit of their respective fortunes to pay for the most anticipated wedding this year.  Unless you live under a rock, you will be hit with some pictures of the royal wedding today over the Internet and traditional news media, and many single ladies are looking at them thinking "my wedding will never be this posh".  Well, don't despair.  Here are 3 fun and fact-filled infographics that will help you think about wedding budgets differently.  Enjoy!

The Cost of a Wedding Knot by CreditSesame.com

Happily Ever Richer by RetailMeNot.com

The Royal Wedding versus The Average Wedding by InfographicsGenerator.com

@RobGarciaSJ