Check credit score before applying for balance transfer + MORE Jan 7th

Inquiries and new accounts both ding your credit score, so choose carefully

From buying gifts to entertaining to taking advantage of Boxing Day sales, there are a lot of opportunities to spend more than you budgeted for over the holidays. That means that many people are starting off 2016 with a holiday hangover in the form of credit card debt.
Click here for the best low interest and balance transfer credit cards in Canada>
But getting back on track and ensuring you never find yourself in the same situation can be easy if you follow these four easy steps:
1: Assess the Damage
You might not want to add up all of the bills to see how badly you overspent, but it’s important that you do. If you still have your receipts, you might even consider taking some things back which could help you reduce the debt you owe.
If you only overspent by a small amount, it might be easy to adjust your budget to make up for those extra expenses.
If, however, you overspent a lot you’ll probably have to sit down and figure out how you’ll repay the money. As you do this, think about what expenses were necessary and which could have been avoided…

If you’re bummed about still being single, you may want to look into your creditworthiness. A recent study by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board found that people with higher credit scores—well above the average of 680—were more likely to form committed relationships. Meanwhile, those with really low scores were far less likely to find a soulmate. But even if you’re already partnered up, having a good credit score still provides a karmic pay off: High-score couples are more likely to stay together longer.

The post How your credit score affects your love life appeared first on MoneySense.

Here are the Rewards Canada Top 5 Credit Card Sign Up offers for the month of January! This is not a ‘best’ credit card list like our Top Travel Rewards Credit Card rankings but instead a look at cards that have very good acquisition offers. As always when choosing a card you should always take other factors into account other than the sign up bonus, but when most or all of these cards are first year free, they can and do pay off even when not taking into account insurance packages and other non-reward benefits. In fact all 5 cards on this list for January are first year free so you can try them out at no cost, get over $1,000 in rewards and decide later on if the card is right for you. All the while earning the sign up bonus which can be used to subsidize your travels! Not a huge change from December. In fact it is still the same five cards being featured however the only change is to the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card which saw its sign up bonus cut from 20,000 miles to 15,000 miles but still with the first year free however…