Best Credit Card Hacking 💪

In the morning!

So as I’m about to hit “publish” on this post, I found a second great credit card tip to get two specials for one today 😉 None of it, btw, I’ve never heard of before in my 15 years of doing this so I had to share!

The first is from my friend, and fellow blog reader, Win (real name!), in response to my $500 registration mistake I shared recently, and as he said this would have prevented it for sure!

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“I ask my credit card company for a new card with a new number every year. That automatically cancels any services I pay for. The service contacts me and I decide if I want to give them a new credit card number.”

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NO! It’s bright!

I asked him to elaborate as this was interesting to me (was it really a subscription reduction?? Or was it a security hack?) and here is what he wrote:

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Did I tell you about my daughter losing my credit card? I’m sorry!!” He didn’t understand that I’m not guilty if someone finds my credit card and uses it. (<- True Truth!)

The next day, I called the credit card company and canceled it. They sent me a new card in the mail. It took 7 to 10 days. I think the pony express was faster than that. 🙂

Wrong? If you have online payments such as a cell phone, Verizon will send you an email saying your credit card didn’t work. You must contact them to give them your new number. I’ve been doing it for a few years now. No problems, but I don’t make many payments online with my credit card. I pay electricity, natural gas, etc through my bank account.

I think it’s a good safety idea. There is a big boom in stolen credit card numbers, so changing your number every year should help.”

(NOTE: So it looks like some card companies already do this automatically! According to a reader: “I just downloaded something from my apple subscription and it turns out that my wife’s card automatically changes its number every 6 months!”)

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Well yes – it’s really good for security, but what a great way to force yourself to UPDATE all your subscriptions each year again. And it’s not like it’s just a calendar thing that pops up and you can remove it – this way you have to act *right then* or your subscription will be cancelled!

Such a great idea, and for a few solid minutes I really considered it… until I realized I have over 25 places my card is linked to (10’ish bills + 15’ish charitable donations) and there’s no way I’d want to deal with that every year 🙃🙃 Def. works best if you have a few linked accounts and/or the patience of Mother Teresa.

Now for the second hack…

This one comes from my personal proofreader, and blog fan, Lenny Bron, whose trick is a little more invasive but doesn’t require as many changes as that original idea:

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I have a new trick I’ve started since my C/C was stolen a few months ago (Chase is good at catching those things, btw).

I set my phone to receive alerts every time a credit card is used at all. So now I know if something weird is being charged (even if it’s a subscription I don’t need anymore) and I can cancel anything right away or at least call the bank to stop the transaction.

So far, the system has been working great! And I can monitor if malicious hackers use my credit cards again!

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Another good tip at least in theory! It forces you to review all your expenses EVERY DAY which is even better in the “attention” department! Of course, that can quickly get annoying if you’re a heavy swiper, so it’ll be interesting to see if Lenny is doing this a year or two from now 😉 Perfect for those who don’t use their cards often, or even better: those who only keep cards for *emergencies*! You’ll know there’s something about going fast in this case!

(NOTE: Follow-up from Lenny: “You can set limits on how much you get notifications for. So if you don’t care about anything spent under $100, you can make the system ignore that. Also, you can choose what kind of notifications you get. If it’s something I want to see right away I let it notify me on my phone, but you can also just choose via email to ignore it. don’t disturb if you don’t want your phone to be off all the time” Good to know!)

And btw, on Lenny’s topic, I have to encourage his mess here as a bug checker as he’s a lot of fun to work with and has the ability to catch all my misspellings (or even misspellings, like typos!! Don’t edit this, Lenny!!). He reviews everything I post for me, and as you can imagine is very patient 😉 If you run a blog or small business and could use an extra set of eyes on things, be sure to reach out to him: TheBlogProofreader.com

So there you have it! Two great tips to consider!

Let me know if any of these ideas resonate with you and/or if you’ve implemented them… And feel free to pass on any other creative hacks you’ve incorporated into your financial life! They are all very helpful and you never know how much of an impact they will have on others!

Big thanks to Win and Lenny for letting me share their thoughts here, and big thanks to all of you for reading. I will see you here again soon 🙏

FYI: Lenny checks my posts *after* I publish them, so if you find any mistakes today that could be why! I’m too lazy to send them to him first for proofreading 😉

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