Sharing a credit card — love or folly?
Most consumers have shared a credit card account with another person, with varied results, according to a recent survey commissioned by creditcards.com.
Nine percent of respondents said sharing a credit card made them feel closer to the person.
But nearly one in five people who have shared an account report that the arrangement has sparked arguments. And seven percent said they have canceled a credit card because of personal conflicts.
Most shared accounts involved a spouse or partner, but about 20 percent of those surveyed said they had shared an account with a child or adult child.
My wife and I share a credit card account, mainly because I fear that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with separate accounts. But I have to admit some squeamishness with the prospect of sharing my credit with one of my kids.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
ONEOK Partners gets good press
A columnist at the Investopedia Web site today gives a recommendation to investors to buy Tulsa-based ONEOK Partners. Aryeh Katz says the pipeline partnership boasts solid fundamentals.
Oneok Partners (NYSE:OKS) operates oil and natural gas pipelines in the American West and Mid-west and currently trades at $55.60. The yield is a solid 7.63% (paid quarterly) and the price-to-earnings ratio is a mere 10.75. Oneok Partners is a leader in the pipeline field. Management has built a strong balance sheet and cash flows, and has recently been raising the dividend and buying back stock.
In light of recent news about state-based energy partnerships, it’s nice to hear some good things about a local entity.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
ClimateMaster president poised despite CNBC glitch
Dan Ellis, president of Oklahoma City-based ClimateMaster, appeared on CNBC this morning to talk about his company’s growth. Ellis was very gracious, especially considering the fact that the host called him “Dave” throughout the conversation and the graphics on the screen also referred to him as “Dave” Ellis, ClimateMaster president.
You can view Ellis’ poised performance at the CNBC Web site.
ClimateMaster installs geothermal heat and cooling units in homes and businesses, using underground pipes to move heat into and out of buildings at great cost savings. The installation costs are about twice as high as conventional systems, but the energy savings make up those higher initial costs fairly quickly, Ellis said.
ClimateMaster is a subsidiary of publicly-traded LSB Industries, which is one of Oklahoma City’s biggest employers. LSB shares have gained about 15 percent in the past month.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Bad loans abound
The second quarter was not a good one for much of the U.S. banking industry. Profits plummeted 86.5 percent to the second-lowest quarterly total since 1991, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported this week.
The biggest factor was higher loan-loss provisions, which totaled $50.2 billion. That’s more than four times the $11.4 billion quarterly total of a year ago.
Losses tied to bad loans also put a hurt on many banks, the FDIC noted in its Quarterly Banking Profile:
Loan losses registered a sizable jump in the second quarter, as loss rates on real estate loans increased sharply at many large lenders. Net charge-offs of loans and leases totaled $26.4 billion in the second quarter, almost triple the $8.9 billion that was charged off in the second quarter of 2007. The annualized net charge-off rate in the second quarter was 1.32 percent, compared to 0.49 percent a year earlier. This is the highest quarterly charge-off rate for the industry since the fourth quarter of 1991.
Things are better in Oklahoma, with a few notable exceptions (as we’ll be reporting in The Oklahoman soon).
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Final word on poverty stats
The U.S. Census Bureau’s voluminous statistics on poverty, income and the uninsured produced a lot of stories, including here at NewsOK.com. But the Oklahoma Policy Institute has extracted a lot of local data.
Check out the group’s Web site for a lot of pertinent information.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
A whole new u-verse of television
Opened the front door to go fetch the morning paper the other day and I found a flyer taped to the door. It said:
“AT&T U-verse Digital Television and High Speed Internet
The alternative to Cox Cable & Satellite you’ve been waiting for
Now available at your address”
So, the new world of television over Internet protocol network has reached my neighborhood. AT&T launched the U-verse television programming service in parts of the metro about a year ago.
I looked over the brochure, which described various packages that start at $69 and go up to about $139 per month.
I’m still not ready to give up cable. I guess I’m comfortable with what I’ve always had.
But it’s nice to have an alternative.
Business Writer
Forgot your password?
Isn’t it nice that most Web sites have a quick link you can click if you forget your password? Unfortunately, those links can be sabotaged by a clever con artist who is slick with the Google-fu.
Herbert H. Thompson used a bit of guile and took advantage of some slack security to steal the identity of a friend who naively believed her information was impenetrable. It’s a cautionary tale.
For many of us, the abundance of personal information we put online combined with the popular model of sending a password reset e-mail has our online security resting unsteadily on the shoulders of one or two e-mail accounts.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Car shopping help
Opencarprice.com is a web site that unveils what has previously been unknowable–the price that others are paying to buy their vehicles. This is sort of a follow-up to a list of new Web sites designed to help consumers save and manage their money.
I found only 15 listings from Toyota Prius buyers, which ranged from the low $20,000s to just over $30,000. Perhaps it will improve with more time and more participants.
I haven’t delved into this site in-depth yet, so me know if you’ve found it useful or useless.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
Money to burn
We’ve begun to publish a series of stories on the impact of inflation on Oklahomans. Burning currency, we thought, would nicely illustrate the concept of how rising prices are eroding our buying power. Of course, we could have used the magic of Photoshop to create a burning bill, but the question was raised: can we just torch a twenty?
Nope. Can’t do it — not legally anyway.
If you feel the need to light up some currency, here’s a video that claims to show a non-destructive way to do it. I can’t vouch for this, so I would probably experiment with something smaller than a $50 bill.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
OC Rolls Out the iPhone
I walked into the Gaylord Student Center on the campus of Oklahoma Christian University Saturday morning and the first person I ran into was Dr. Mike O’Neal, university president. I was there to cover the first day of the school’s iPhone distribution to all full-time students for the fall semester. As O’Neal and I greeted one another I noticed he was carrying an iPhone in his hand. So I asked him to pose with it, and this is the result.
More about OC’s iPhone event in Tuesday’s Business section of The Oklahoman.
Business Reporter
