By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

For people trying to build a good credit history, credit utilization can be an important factor in raising their credit scores. Credit utilization — sometimes called debt-to-credit ratio — is the percentage of the available credit on your credit cards that you actually using. For example, if you have $10,000 of available credit on a credit card (or cards) and you have a total balance of $1000, your credit utilization ratio is 10%.

While we advise keeping that ratio low — under 30% at least, but under 10% or even 5% if you want to be aggressive in building your score — some people worry that paying off their credit cards each month will put their utilization at 0% and thus not show up as a positive on their credit reports. This worry leads to some counter-intuitive (and wrong) advice about carrying a balance from month to month to show that you are using credit wisely.

Pay Your Cards Off In Full!

So, before we go any further, let’s be clear: carrying a small balance on your credit cards from month to month does NOT help your credit score. It is NOT necessary to pay interest in order to build your credit score. It will NOT increase your score faster than paying off your cards in full. Pay off your credit cards completely each month. Do not pay interest with the idea that you are somehow helping your credit history. You will end up paying good money for no benefit.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

Work is work. But a career is not just a job. And if you think of your job as “just a job,” you probably won’t have much of a career. Not to get all mystical about it, but if your long-term goal is to make more money, thinking of the work you’re doing today as part of a “career” is going to take you much further than if you think of it only as a job.

Careers Grow

The key to having a career is growth. Growth in skills, definitely. Growth in responsibility, probably. When you have a career, your co-workers will expect more from you over time. A new hire will be expected not only to “learn the ropes” in terms of how a company operates, but also to increase his or her skills to provide greater value than when s/he first came on board. In most companies or industries, a career will entail a series of positions that escalate in terms of skills required, responsibility given, and pay received.

No CEO got to the top unless he/she continually improved his/her skills and took on more and more responsibility. This is true even if your company’s CEO started the company from scratch and appointed herself CEO before she had any employees. You can’t found and/or lead a successful company unless you’ve somehow built up the skills necessary to be in charge.

That doesn’t mean you have to be “in charge” in order to have a career. And it doesn’t mean a career is always a steady climb up the ladder at one particular company. A career may involve many different companies in the same industry. It may involve companies in different industries, but positions with a similar skill set. For example, you might work in operations with several different companies in the airline industry, or you might be a marketing professional who works in all different industries but has a wide-ranging knowledge of techniques that apply no matter where you go.

Any work you pursue that allows you to deepen your skills over time so that they can be used for a higher level of accomplishment is part of creating a career.

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

AMC Theatres announced today a new movie subscription service called Stubs A-List that will compete with MoviePass, Sinemia, and any other similar services — and could very well kill them off.

Higher Price But Solves “Pain Points” of Competitors

AMC Stubs A-List subscribers will pay $19.95 per month, essentially double the $9.95 per month charged by MoviePass. However, AMC is offering certain features that MoviePass and Sinemia either don’t have or have taken away. Specifically, Stubs A-List allows you to:

• See up to 3 movies per week
• See multiple movies in the same day
• See the same movie multiple times
• Book up to 3 movies in advance
• See 3D and IMAX movies as part of the subscription

By Adam Jusko, ProudMoney.com, adam@proudmoney.com

The Brex Visa Corporate Card is a card that aims to give startup companies fast access to credit without the need for a personal guarantee from a company founder or top executive. Many small business credit cards do require such a personal guarantee, so the Brex Visa could be attractive to startup businesses.

Seems To Target Mostly Tech Startups

However, Brex seems to mainly be targeting tech startups that have good-sized investments from venture capitalists or other deep-pocketed backers, meaning their ideal customer probably has a good cash position even if the company as a whole doesn’t have a credit history for Brex to consider. In other words, they’re probably not going to approve your local startup restaurant owner in Minnesota. (Or wherever outside of Silicon Valley.)

In fact, some of Brex’s own backers are tech-focused venture capitalists or individuals, including two PayPal founders, Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.

If we were looking for an opportunity to work from home, these are the 15 opportunities we’d tackle first. All are legitimate stay-at-home work jobs, and this site does not receive any compensation if you choose to work with one of them. (See also: How To Make Money Without A “Regular” Job)

• Enterprise – The well-known car rental company often hires at-home customer service representatives and reservation agents who work with Enterprise customers by telephone.
• LiveOps – Provide customer service from home for various companies supplied by LiveOps. They also offer stay-at-home sales opportunities. Could be full-time or part-time. Past LiveOps agents have reported making as much as $15 per hour, but that is not guaranteed. No experience necessary for most jobs. Note that a background check costing about $60 is necessary and will be your responsibility.