Credit Card

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

Two new Las Vegas venues invite guests to - quite literally - have a blast. Letting loose with high-powered firearms may not be everyone's idea of a good time, but my visits to two indoor gun ranges suggested just how popular they are with tourists. The bed. After you've plunkeddown plenty for a session at a gun range, that credit card may be close to maxing out. Consider staying at the Plaza (1 Main St.; [800] 634-6575, http://www.plazahotelcasino.com ; rooms from $31 weekdays and $80 weekends)

Payday loans are billed as a quick way for borrowers to receive small loans, with no collateral or credit requirements. But the cost of the loans, which proponents say are supposed to be for emergency use, is extremely high. In California, each $100 borrowed costs up to $15; thus the fee on the maximum allowed $300 payday loan would amount to as much as $45. The annual percentage rate on that deal comes out to a whopping 460%. But do these borrowers, who might turn to payday loans to get money for recurring expenses, such as for groceries or housing, have better options?

By all accounts, West Hollywood showered its employees with generosity. The city spent $2,070 at the Beverly Center for six Montblanc pens, given to workers who had reached employment milestones. An additional $1,500 went to Gelson's Market gift cards for city employees. One credit card in the city manager's office, used by various employees, accumulated $121,000 over three years. Then there were the meals. Receipts show that one city councilman, John Duran, charged dozens of meals, often multiple times a week.

UCLA can do it. But Anthem Blue Cross can't. Hit you with a fee for using a credit card, that is. Every time I write about Anthem's proposed $15 "convenience fee" for people to pay their premiums with plastic, and how this would violate state law, I get bombarded with calls and emails from readers asking why some places get away with the practice. If such surcharges are illegal, they wonder, why is it that UCLA charges a 2.75% fee for students and parents to pay for tuition and other costs with credit cards?

Two new Las Vegas venues invite guests to - quite literally - have a blast. Letting loose with high-powered firearms may not be everyone's idea of a good time, but my visits to two indoor gun ranges suggested just how popular they are with tourists. The bed. After you've plunkeddown plenty for a session at a gun range, that credit card may be close to maxing out. Consider staying at the Plaza (1 Main St.; [800] 634-6575, http://www.plazahotelcasino.com ; rooms from $31 weekdays and $80 weekends)

Wild From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail Cheryl Strayed Alfred A. Knopf: 336 pp., $25.95 -- Toward the end of Cheryl Strayed's memoir, "Wild," the author, who is in the middle of hiking 1,100 miles alone across the West Coast's formidable Pacific Crest Trail, loses one of her hiking boots. She stands at the edge of a precipice and gasps. But the moment has passed and the shoe is gone. "The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding," she writes.

Got a beef with your mortgage lender? Is your bank unresponsive when you complain that your escrow account is fouled up and making your monthly payments needlessly high? Did your loan officer switch you into a more costly home loan than you were promised? Or worse yet, did your home loan servicer ignore you when you told him you've had an unexpected drop in income and needed a modification to avoid missing payments? If any of these situations sound familiar, here's a heads-up about the newest and least-publicized source of federal help: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's home mortgage complaint and dispute resolution hotline.

Frank Cavestani and his wife fell behind on their Capital One credit card payments about a decade ago. Their accounts were subsequently closed by the lender, which wrote off about $2,000 in debt they couldn't pay. So it was more than a little strange when the Hollywood couple received a pair of bills from Cap One the other day for a combined $5,195.07 in debt and interest. Stranger still, when Cavestani contacted Cap One, he said a service rep told him the resurrecting of old loans is accommodated by recent credit card regulations approved by the Federal Reserve ?

See what the view out your hotel room will look like before you slap down your credit card. Name: Room77.com What it does: Illuminates how much difference exists between rooms in the same hotel. By using image-search technology to find longitude, latitude and altitude for each room, the website creates an image of the view from the room. It covers about 2,500 hotels in more than a dozen U.S. cities, plus London. You can also reserve the room from Room 77, which sends you to Orbitz.

President Obama officially launched his re-election campaign with public rallies in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia, on Saturday.With that launch came a re-tooled stump speech which both defended his record in office and laid out the contrast with Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The speeches in both cities were largely the same. Here's a full transcript of his remarks in Columbus, following the acknowledgement of local leaders. OBAMA: "I want to thank so many of our Neighborhood Team Leaders for being here today.  You guys will be the backbone of this campaign.  And I want the rest of you to join a team or become a leader yourself, because we are going to win this thing the old-fashioned way -- door by door, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

A few months ago, the radio daughter and I were in Las Vegas for March Madness and she said she heard Junior Seau was signing autographs across the hall. I bounced from my chair, and at my age bouncing doesn't come so easily anymore. But just the mention of his name prompted this incredible feeling of joy, and what a delight it would be to say hello again to someone always so full of life. How do you not remember someone who took it upon himself to work with the basketball daughter?

Toward the end of Cheryl Strayed's memoir, "Wild," the author, who is in the middle of hiking 1,100 miles alone across the West Coast's formidable Pacific Crest Trail, loses one of her hiking boots. She stands at the edge of a precipice and gasps. But the moment has passed and the shoe is gone. "The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding," she writes. "It would take whatever it wanted and never give it back. I really did have only one boot. " This line about the universe could be the catchphrase for the book itself, which pivots with unflinching honesty around the author's loss of her mother to lung cancer when Strayed was 22. This crushing blow leaves Strayed unmoored as her family splinters apart without its matriarch.

Wild From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail Cheryl Strayed Alfred A. Knopf: 336 pp., $25.95 -- Toward the end of Cheryl Strayed's memoir, "Wild," the author, who is in the middle of hiking 1,100 miles alone across the West Coast's formidable Pacific Crest Trail, loses one of her hiking boots. She stands at the edge of a precipice and gasps. But the moment has passed and the shoe is gone. "The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding," she writes.

Most weekdays, Jarrad Sims and Tin Tam, a pair of college buddies, ride their bikes to a computer center and try to hack into computer security systems belonging to Boeing Co. Rather than having them arrested, Boeing is paying them to do it - a situation that the car-loving, video-gaming friends have pronounced "awesome. " For two years, the young engineers have worked side by side in a secluded unit where they design and thoroughly test ironclad security systems for the largest aerospace company in the world.

The Obama administration's consumer financial watchdog wants to undo a limit on some upfront fees on credit cards, prompting criticism that it could hurt borrowers with poor credit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is backing away from restrictions on what the industry calls fee-harvester cards. Issuers of these cards make such customers pay a large fee before they can receive cards with very low credit lines. The agency indicated that its decision stemmed from a court ruling saying the fee cap appeared to be barred by "plain and unambiguous" language in the applicable law. Lobbyists and the public have until June 11 to file comments or objections before a final decision is made.

President Obama officially launched his re-election campaign with public rallies in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Virginia, on Saturday.With that launch came a re-tooled stump speech which both defended his record in office and laid out the contrast with Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The speeches in both cities were largely the same. Here's a full transcript of his remarks in Columbus, following the acknowledgement of local leaders. OBAMA: "I want to thank so many of our Neighborhood Team Leaders for being here today.  You guys will be the backbone of this campaign.  And I want the rest of you to join a team or become a leader yourself, because we are going to win this thing the old-fashioned way -- door by door, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Dear Liz: I am working on paying my bad debt from the past to rebuild my scores. I have one credit card that I pay in full every month, but no installment loan. I recently was given the opportunity to take a car loan with monthly payments I could easily afford. Here is my confusion: Taking on more debt while trying to eliminate past debt is usually not advisable. But I also know creditors like to see both revolving and installment credit. Am I OK to take the car loan to improve my mix of credit, or should I just use that extra money to pay off my past debt?

The much hyped and eagerly awaited Raspberry Pi -- a $35 computer the size of a credit card -- is finally moving out of the testing room and into consumers' hands. If you were one of the lucky 10,000 people who were able to pre-order the first run of the Raspberry Pi back in March, you should be receiving your mini-computer by April 20. And by mini, we mean miniature and stripped down. The Raspberry Pi computer is built around the ARM chip that is used in most mobile phones.

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. Beauty queen — Prosecutors in Santa Clara County have accused a former Mrs. Pakistan World of enticing desperate homeowners to pay her tens of thousands of dollars in a loan-modification scam. The Santa Clara County district attorney's office charged Saman Hasnain and her husband, Jawad, with 17 counts of grand theft, accusing them of bilking 17 homeowners, the San Jose Mercury News reported. In the scheme, prosecutors allege, Hasnain and her husband told homeowners that for an advance fee of at least $4,500, they would negotiate with banks to reduce the homeowners' mortgages and forgive overdue payments.