US Finance World

The dollar bill needs you.

A growing number of merchants won’t accept cash anymore. That includes a lot of airlines, which insist you pay by credit card if you want to buy a drink or a sandwich on board. And now comes news that the U.S. Treasury is printing fewer dollars, as we move towards an all-plastic economy.

Great news for the banks. Great news for the card companies. Great news for the marketing establishment, which can now pore through our transactions and our personal lives in greater and greater detail.

Me? Call me a contrarian, or just call me ornery, but I view this with gloom. This not a step forward. It’s a step backwards. Personally, I’ve been moving the other way. I’ve cut down on my use of credit cards and debit cards. The latest news is the final push I needed to get them out of my life completely. I’m going all cash.

Look for Brett Arends’ new column in the August issue of SmartMoney Magazine, available here and on newsstands July 14.

Here are ten reasons why.

1.

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This is Freedom week here at 20somethingfinance and with Independence Day. And heres more Freedom news for you.

I recently posted that one of my favorite credit cards, the Chase Freedom card, upped its promotion to $200 for new account holders. While thats still true, theyve now made it easier for you to get it.

Previously, you had to get the card, and then you get a $100 bonus after $500 in purchases in 3 months and then another $100 bonus when you make an additional $1,000  in purchases in 6 months.

Now, you will earn the $200 bonus cash back after making the $500 total in purchases in the first 3 months, which anyone can do when charging a portion of their groceries and/or utilities.

Chase Freedom offers:

• Up to an additional 10% cash back when you shop online through Chase.
• Unlimited 1% cash back on all other purchases, without maximum limits.
• Your rewards never expire.
• No annual fee.

Starting this past week and going through Sept.

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Has the shine permanently come off of Apple?

It certainly looked that way to many earlier this spring and summer, as Apple’s (AAPL) stock retreated from its all-time high of $364.90 to its Jun. 20 low of $310.50. But others remain as convinced as ever in Apple’s long-term potential and have been encouraged by Apple’s recovery over the last two weeks to its current level of $343.

What do the top-performing investment advisers think?

It would appear as though they are in the “Apple is losing its shine” camp. Consider the accompanying table, which reflects the number of upgrades and downgrades that the top performers have issued on Apple over the first half of 2011. (I defined this group of top performers to include just those advisers on the Hulbert Financial Digest’s monitored list who are ahead of a buy-and-hold in the stock market over the last decade.)

Month New Upgrades (Upgrades minus downgrades) June-1 May-1 April0 March0 February0 January+1

Notice that January was the last month in which these top performers issued more upgrades on Apple than downgrades.

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Happy Birthday America! Here’s some of what I’ve been reading over the long weekend:

The Continental OnePass Plus credit card is still offering , and will still work after the merger.

Robert Powell takes a look at the credit cards that offer zero interest on both purchases and balance transfers…

How flexible is your credit card? And I’m not talking about its primitive butter spreading and ice cream scooping abilities!

Yes, recently our flexible friends have become a tad rigid in functions. Granted, there are now 20 month 0% balance transfer cards and lengthy interest-free purchase cards, but these credit cards don’t always offer everything to everyone.

So what can you do if you want a good all-round credit card?

Well, fortunately, there are some credit cards around that allow you to transfer debt across from an existing card and pay no interest on that debt, as well as let you spend on the card interest-free!

Let’s take a look…

Halifax today dropped the rates on its All in One MasterCard by extending the 0% periods on both purchases and balance transfers from 12 to 13 months. The ban

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