Think all secured credit cards are the same? It’s ok, you can admit it. I mean, it’s a natural assumption; they all require minimum security deposits of around $200, the exact amount you put down equals your credit line, you get back your deposit minus any outstanding balances when you close your account, and so on and so forth. Interestingly though, a new study helps complete the picture and reveals some important differences between secured credit card issuers.

Overview & Application Requirements
The first thing you need to know is that not all banks or credit card companies offer secured credit cards. In fact, only 62% of the issuers investigated in the study do. What’s more, there are some minimum requirements for approval that all issuers must abide by. Some are going to seem familiar, others may be a surprise:

By now, everyone knows what Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T have to offer in terms of standard data, texting and talk plans for the new iPhone 4S. But what about the niche aspects of major carriers’ iPhone offerings? Not every consumer is content with plain vanilla utility and many, in fact, require certain supplemental features. With that being said, we took a look at how the aforementioned networks differ in terms of international usage costs, mobile hotspots and how “Night & Weekend” minutes are classified.

Night & Weekend Minutes
In our previous article examining the iPhone 4S, we noted that the three carriers offered calling plans in terms of how many “Anytime” minutes they provided: 450, 900, or “Unlimited.” Obviously, if you opt for the unlimited anytime minutes, the number of “Night & Weekend” minutes you get or when in the day these minutes begin doesn’t matter, but the same cannot be said for those of you that choose the two other options. So let’s take a closer look at what they offer.

Retirement is ultimately a function of your bank balance, not your age. Not long ago, I came across some statistics which showed that the majority of the US population will either retire broke or still have to work to have a decent retirement.

I don’t know about you, but this isn’t even close to good enough for me, and definitely is not in alignment with my vision of a happy retirement lifestyle.

You’ve likely seen the Sprint commercial that shows phones from the four most prominent smartphone carriers—Sprint, Verizon, At&T and T-Mobile—racing up a chart, almost as if they are those mascots that race at sporting events, in order to display the differences in their data plans. And while it’s been around since about late July, this commercial might not have struck a chord with you until the October 4 announcement that Sprint would for the first time be carrying the iPhone. With the new iPhone 4S slated to hit stores tomorrow at 8 AM, many of you have a tough choice to make in terms of which network to get it on. So, how are you supposed to decide?

Obviously, people already under contract will stick with what they’ve got, but where you cell phone free agents end up depends on precisely how much texting, talking and e-mailing you plan to do. Each of the networks carrying the new iPhone—the aforementioned four, minus T-Mobile—offers plans at different price points, and figuring out your usage habits ahead of time is the best way to get the coverage you need without incurring extraneous costs. To help in this endeavor, we took a look at the best carriers for different types of smartphone consumers:

In a previous article, I made the case that usury laws are counter-productive. Usury laws, which cap interest rates for lenders, completely fail to serve their intended purpose of forcing banks to deliver affordable loans and instead result in the declining availability of loans for anyone whose credit history merits an interest rate above an arbitrary cap. While this is still true for regular interest rates, I would like to suggest one particular feature of our contemporary lending industry that could actually benefit from usury laws: Penalty rates.

Why? Because penalty (or default) rates on loans and credit cards currently dictate the order in which consumers repay their debt obligations during times of crisis and invite banks to engage in reverse competition over who can charge the highest interest rates.