Hi there, my friend.
Can I confess something? This week got away from me, and I’m giving myself some grace with my newsletter.
Coincidentally, the last time I did this was a year ago this week. During that week, I attended two funerals in four days: The first, my father-in-law; the second, the founder of my company, LendingTree. It was all too much, honestly, so I just focused my attention elsewhere rather than on the newsletter.
This week, thankfully, is nothing at all like that one. This week is primarily about the chaos of everyday life — work, family, pets and so on. Still, it has been a little nutty, including a trip to NYC.
That doesn’t mean I’m not delivering you money tips that can make a real difference to your finances this week. It just means that this edition is a little shorter than some others.
Here’s my first tip for you…
Wall Street Journal: The simple request that could lower your mortgage rate
Is that an Ask, Save, Earn headline right there or what?
In her LinkedIn post, WSJ’s Veronica Dagher characterized the request this way:
Lenders can now pull your credit using VantageScore 4.0 alongside classic FICO scores, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac allow them to use whichever score gives you the best rate.
Ask your lender if they pull VantageScore 4.0. If they don’t, you can shop around for one who does.
In other words, you don’t have to settle for a lender using your FICO score to determine your creditworthiness for a mortgage. You can ask that they check your score from VantageScore — FICO’s primary and ascending rival in the credit scoring space — as well.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that there will be much difference between FICO’s scores and VantageScore’s scores, but you’d kind of be silly to not at least.ask. After all, houses are the biggest purchases most of us will ever make, so even a fraction of percentage point difference in rate can add up to tens of thousands of dollars in savings.
(And by the way, if you’ve never heard of VantageScore, it is OK. As I mentioned, they’re a credit scoring company like FICO, and they’ve been steadily growing in prominence for many years. However, the scenario described in the WSJ story is a really, really big thing for them. It is a major step forward for them in their competition with FICO, which has long been the gold standard for credit scoring.)
Speaking of high interest rates…
LendingTree: Credit card interest rates hit highest level since December
I’m nerdy about credit card data. Every month for more than a decade, spanning a couple of different companies, I go through nearly 200 credit cards’ terms and conditions to see if their interest rates have changed.
Don’t act like you’re not jealous.
Honestly, rates don’t move that often. Generally, credit card rates stay pretty static unless the Federal Reserve raises or lowers their benchmark rate. When the Fed moves, credit card rates tend to move in the same direction by about the same amount. That movement applies to your current balances, too, and usually starts to appear on your monthly statement a couple of billing cycles after the Fed makes its move.
The Fed also influences the rates people are offered when they get a new credit card. That often happens in a matter of days or weeks rather than over many months, and we saw this play out this week.
The Fed announced on September 16 that they’d raise rates by a quarter-point, in an effort to knock down inflation. (I talked about it here.) This week, my monthly review of card rates found that most of the biggest of the big credit card issuers have already bumped up the APRs they’re offering new applicants by that quarter-point. As a result, the national average APR on a new credit card offer climbed to its highest level since last year: 23.96%.
Because not all card issuers have bumped up their rates yet, that national average is very, very likely to keep rising for at least the next month or so. That means that if you’re thinking of getting a new credit card, expect rates to be higher than the last time you looked.
It also makes it all the more important that you pay your balance off every single month. Of course, we know that’s not always possible. Life is incredibly expensive in 2026, but paying it off in full each month should absolutely be the goal.
In other news… Another happy success story
Got a note over the weekend from DJ, a longtime supporter of my book and my Substack. A passionate advocate of personal finance programs in schools in his home state of North Carolina, DJ was generous enough to provide my book to a group of PF teachers in that state when the book first came out in 2024.
One of those teachers, named Rex, told DJ he was hit with a small bank fee. The teacher said the fee was his fault, the result of a mistake he admittedly made. Still, he wasn’t eager to pay, so he called and asked to have the fee waived.
DJ told me, “He said he pulled out your book and followed the script to the letter, and it worked!”
It was only a $10 charge, but as expensive as life is today, every dollar matters. Plus, his success in getting that $10 fee waived will hopefully inspire him to make more of these calls in the future. Then the savings will really start to pile up.
If you’re in New York Friday, come say hello!
I’m in the city for a few days this week, and I’m so excited to be part of the 2026 Personal Finance Summit put on by the Society For Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). It’s an all-day event featuring some of the biggest names in the personal finance space, including the great Jean Chatzky, who will be talking about her important new book, The Forever Paycheck.
As for me, I’ll be on a panel with amazing journalists from Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and NBC News talking about the state of personal finance journalism.
Can’t wait. Click on the image below for details about the event.
Until next time!
Matt