Champ Money

Most people know that when shopping around for a new mortgage, auto loan, or credit card, that they should first check their credit reports, as well as their FICO score, just so there are no surprised. What many people don’t know, however, is that similar reports are used by the insurance industry.

The reports used by insurance companies are called C.L.U.E. reports. There are versions for personal property and auto.

The C.L.U.E. Personal Property report provides a seven year history of losses associated with an individual and his/her personal property. The following data will be identified for each loss: date of loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general information such as policy number, claim number and insurance company name.

The C.L.U.E. Auto report provides a seven year history of automobile insurance losses associated with an individual. The following data will be identified for each loss: date of loss, loss type, and amount paid along with general information such as policy number, claim number and insurance company name.

You can get a free copy of your C.L.U.E. report here.

Sending SMS text messages to cell phones doesn’t have to cost you anything, if you have access to the Web.

There are some great services that allow you to send FREE text messages to most major cell phone providers, and without spam. A couple that we’ve tried are:

txt2day.com
mywirelessreminder.com

Note, however, that the person receiving the text message might be charged for the incoming text, depending upon their plan.

Are you ready to break free from the chains of Microsoft Office?

Office became the “standard” suite of office applications for good reason, and it remains an excellent product today - providing most users with far more power and features than they’ll ever need or use. But it does come at a cost - which is, ironically, the price.

The free open-source OpenOffice.org has been gaining market share over the years with their MS-Office compatible office suite. And with their recent version 3 release, they’re bound to gain even more.

There is not a compelling reason to throw out your Microsoft Office license and switch over to OpenOffice. But, if it’s time to upgrade, or to purchase a new copy of an office suite, it’s definitely time to take a serious look at OpenOffice. Most people never look back.

Quicken Online is now free.

This is the online version of the ever popular Quicken finance software from Intuit.

Quicken Online was introduced earlier this year, but up until this week there was a monthly subscription fee to use the service. Intuit has removed the fees to bring Quicking inline with the competition, such as Mint.com and others.

You should try a few similar online services to find out what works best for you.

Rounding out our posts covering free directory assistance services, is the third option: 1-800-YellowPages.

This service is offered by AT&T, but like the options mentioned in previous posts, is completely free.

1-800-YellowPages is advertiser supported, so you’ll encounter a 5 or 10 second ad when you call. In our opinion, this is a fair tradeoff for a free service.

In a previous post here at Champ Money, we shared our thoughts on a free directory assistance service (1-800-FREE-411). While that is a great service, it’s not the only one.

Another crowd favorite is from none other than one of our favorite companies, Google. With a number that’s also easy to remember, 1-800-GOOG-411, you can use this great “411 service” from any phone, and it’s completely free.

If you’re calling from a mobile device, you can even have GOOG-411 send you a text message with more details and a map. Simply say “Text message” or “Map it”.

Currently GOOG-411 only has listings for businesses. While there is no official word on the inclusion of residential listings, it won’t surprise us at all if Google adds them in the future.

Over the years, Microsoft has earned the top spot for office suite software. Microsoft office has evolved into a powerhouse set of applications, and basically the “standard” for most businesses, students and home users. But, you will pay a premium price for it.

However, you can get Microsoft compatible applications for word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and more completely free in the OpenOffice application available at OpenOffice.org.

The latest release of OpenOffice is quite refined and is worthy office suite alternative.

There are an increasing number of websites offering free online courses and lessons to the general public. Some are offered by colleges, some by government agencies, and some by private companies.

You can begin learning a foreign language thanks to the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk/languages).

Some of the languages currently available are French, Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and Greek.

Stop paying for directory assistance!

The next time you need directory assistance, try calling 1-800-FREE-411 (easy to remember!).

It appears that this service is advertiser sponsored, so you might have to listen to a very short advertisement (about 10-12 seconds).

This is a minor inconvenience and well worth the ads in our opinion.

Check with your local public library to see if they provide audio book “lending” services.

Many public libraruies not only lend CDs containing audio books, but also now allow downloads of audio book MP3s. Libraries offering this service will usually have some information about it on their website.