Anyone who is anyone on the cutting-edge of new technologies—whether they are fans of it or part of the industry—will be following the ultra-cool South By Southwest (SXSW) Music+Film+Interactive Conferences in Austin, Texas. Which is exactly why Credit Karma is on a panel for this year’s conference to talk about fresh innovations in money, banking, and personal finance.

Credit Karma is sharing the floor with fellow leaders and visionaries of the personal finance world such as Lending Club, SmartyPig, and Mint. This panel fits right into SXSW Interactive, which hosts presentations and products on the latest products, trends, and issues surrounding new technologies and innovations. It’s the ultimate cool geek event that showcases the convergence of intelligent design and exciting creativity.

Why is it important to have Credit Karma and other financial services at this edgy, hip conference? With the financial crisis and recession coming into play in nearly everyone’s life, consumers have a unique opportunity to access new ways to manage their personal finances outside the traditional financial norm. Lending Club offers person-to-person lending for facilitating loans within communities rather than banks; Mint’s popular budgeting platform compels people to save and budget like never before; SmartyPig creates an alternative banking experience with higher rates and friendlier services. Last but not certainly not least, Credit Karma aims to change people’s perspective of financial fitness by providing free credit scores and personalized savings offers. Move over banks and credit unions; these four players are poised to serve the changing needs of consumers today.

If you are interested in hearing bright minds discuss the changing way consumers interact with the financial industry, and why consumers should look to alternative, pro-consumer sites like Credit Karma, check out Banking 2.0: Financial Services Driven by People & Emerging Technologies panel on March 13 at SXSW. Panelists include:

Kenneth Lin, CEO, CreditKarma.com
Rob Garcia, Sr Director Product Strategy, LendingClub.com
Aaron Forth, VP of Product, Mint.com
Bob Weinschenk, CEO, SmartyPig.com

No time to book a flight to Texas but don’t want to miss this awesome line-up? Follow @SXSWfinance for live updates and questions to the panelists during the panel.

3,250 Pennsylvania homeowners can thank the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency for saving their home from foreclosure last year. Established in 1983, the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency has been offering Pennsylvanians suffering financial hardships—whether from unemployment, divorce, medical problems, etc.—mortgage relief of up to $60,000 for as long as three years. With the number of applicants jumping from the average 10,000 homeowners to a record 14,000 homeowners last year, an agency like this is just the kind of miracle Pennsylvanians, and the shaky housing market as a whole, needs.

Here’s how it works: the loan program receives information from lenders of potential foreclosures, and the program reviews cases that are “suffering temporary hardships beyond their control”. Each case is reviewed based on financial background, debts, and likeliness to land a job, and other factors that attributes to the success of a homeowner being aided by the program. “In 83% of cases, the agency wiped out borrowers’ arrears. For the remaining 17% of clients, it pays their monthly mortgage obligation,” states Yahoo! Finance.

The best part about this agency is that, unlike the bailout money that was handed to the banks, the results have been overwhelmingly positive. The initiative has distributed $450 million on behalf of 43,000 homeowners since it began in the 1980s, and has an impressive 80% success rate in helping homeowners avoid foreclosure. If other states had the foresight to establish similar initiatives to protect its residents, maybe we wouldn’t be in this dire of a housing crisis.

While there is less confidence in Obama’s loan modification program, which was intended to help those underwater on their mortgage, the Pennsylvania Agency has set the standard for similar programs in other states. A recent $1.5 billion federal initiative to help Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, and Nevada–the states hardest hit by the mortgage crisis–has officials making calls to Pennsylvania to learn how to replicate the successes of their program.

The Washington Post reports on a new round of foreclosures threatening the shaky housing market. A new wave of foreclosures, an all-too common occurrence since the start of the housing crisis, could hit the real estate market just as it is poised to stabilize this year. About 5 to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure right now and continues to swell in numbers; as homeowners who are seriously delinquent fail to find mortgage relief, these pending properties may become foreclosures by the end of the year. This impending wave of foreclosed properties crowding the supply of homes for sale will undercut housing prices and risk the recovery of the housing market.

Follow today’s roundup full of ways to save money and find relief with your home and mortgage, plus our top five favorite Credit Karma mentions of the week.

Credit Karma in the News

• Bargaineering mentions Credit Karma in a blog on why we need to ban credit checks for job applications.
• USA Today interviews Credit Karma CEO Ken Lin, who suggests smart tips on how to cope with new fees and the rule changes on credit cards.
• The San Francisco Chronicle reports, Credit Karma Teams Up With WTDirect to Announce Savings Account Offer. Check out the potential to earn $600 on our own blog post about this exclusive WTDirect deal.
• Credit Karma throws in its two cents in bank’s overdraft policies in the MarketWatch article, ” Bank of America kills overdraft fees.”
• Credit Karma’s Credit Score Climate Report supplies some interesting numbers for Kansas City Business Journal’s, ” Kansas City consumers added the most credit card debt in February,” and Pacific Business News’, ” Hawaii credit card debt down.”

Home & Mortagage News

• Save money on your mortgage now! Check out The Wall Street Journal’s home-saving loans afoot.
• Struggling homeowners know solutions aren’t easy for underwater mortgages. Read more on Freep.com.
• If you are struggling with your home, before your mortgage goes underwater, CNN Money suggests a last ditch effort on getting an emergency loan when you can’t make your mortgage.
• Great advice from Frugal Dad called on strategies so you don’t lose money on a house again.
• Five Cent Nickel blog reports on two common mortgage and housing mistakes to avoid to save your home and your money.

While most customers are receiving costly bad news about annual fees or rate hikes from their credit card issuers, select cardholders are unexpectedly receiving new credit card perks such as more generous rewards programs.

Citigroup Inc. upgraded select customers’ American Airline-stamped credit cards to earn 1.2 miles for every dollar spent, up from 1 mile per dollar. JP Morgan Chase and Co. also improved their customers British Airway card to 1.25 miles, also up from 1 mile per dollar. Chase, and likely more issuers in the near future, did not disclose specifics but enhanced rewards earning power for their Marriott cards. Citigroup, and presumably other issuers, announced that these card enhancements are for customers with good credit standing.

Using reward incentives to encourage cardholders to spend more—rather than penalize cardholders or excessively charge them—is a new tactic to recoup money lost to the CARD Act without hurting customer loyalty. This move is certainly a 180 degree turn from the past months of cutting back rewards programs, implementing annual fees, unexpected charges, inactivity penalties, and more. These so-called “earning accelerators” are designed to get cardholders to use one credit card over another.

One strategy is to profit from the transaction fees that merchants pay. Every time a credit card is swiped, 1 to 2.2 percent of the transaction goes to the bank that issued the card. Issuers are currently competing with debit cards, which have surpassed credit cards transactions since 2005 and also get lower transactions fees than credit cards. Polishing up rewards programs for credit cards is needed to make them outshine debit cards in the eyes of their most profitable customers.

Another strategy is, in industry-speak, “breakage.” Basically, issuers don’t mind if you pile up unused rewards because issuers get a portion of what they spend on rewards programs back as part of their bottom line. With nearly $2.6 billion spent on rewards programs and an estimated 5%-30% of rewards unused in any program, issuers stand to earn a lot from breakage.

These are just a few of the perks issuers are rolling out in the next few months in order to keep their best customers charging on credit. We’ll stay tuned to see if these moves are enough to outpace the past months of price-gouging industry practices to get consumers to switch credit cards to the top of their wallets.

Consumer credit levels have up and down results at the start of 2010. On the one hand, overall consumer credit increased 2.4% in January (as compared to a 2.2% decline in December) and showed $2.45 trillion in consumer credit outstanding, reports Credit.com. But, the good news is that revolving consumer credit has consistently decreased every month for over a year, showing that consumers are continuing to pay off their credit card debt.

Credit.com writes, “Though a drop in revolving consumer credit may be taken as a positive sign in the form of people paying off their credit card debt, it also can have a negative connotation. A drop in revolving debt outstanding could also mean that banks had to charge off of what is owed to them as customers find it hard to pay off their credit card debt.”

Stay on top of your debt and credit card news with the rest of today’s roundup favorite personal finance articles and posts.

Credit Card News

• Forbes reports, Fed proposes rules limiting credit card fees.
• The New York Times writes on a proposal for reigning in credit card fees.
• More insight on credit card news from Forbes, explaining why now time to rethink that cash-back credit card.
• 10 things your credit-card company won’t tell you, from SmartMoney.
• The Simple Dollar blog answers a frequently asked cardholder question: Why was my credit limit lowered?

Debt News

• In debt and cannot repay? Tips to work with debt collectors, writes Bible Money Matters.
• Committed to doing what it takes to pay down that debt? Follow MainStreet’s cut credit card debt in 11 steps.
• A necessary step to successful debt reduction is building up savings to go towards paying off debt! Check out 6 ways to a successful savings plan from Bankrate.
• Worried about the growing American deficit? Huffington Post has an interesting article on what you can do right now about the debt.
• Are you guilty of shopping while also trying to pay off your credit cards? Read Get Rich Slowly’s hidden costs of spending while in debt for a little insight on why you should be more financially responsible.

Disclaimer: Our analysis is for informational purposes. The data shows correlations for a number of reasons and is based on averages. As anyone who has taken a statistics class knows, causality and correlation are very different.

Dear Credit Karma,
Will checking my credit score on Credit Karma lower my score?

Absolutely not! Credit Karma aims to help you earn and maintain healthy credit without hurting your credit. When you pull your credit score via Credit Karma, it is categorized as a soft inquiry because you are essentially pulling your own score as a type of background check, similar to inquiries done by employers, landlords, banks, and more.

The type of inquiry that will ding your credit score is a hard inquiry. Hard inquiries are done by credit card issuers, mortgage lenders, and other lenders that are pulling your credit report for the purpose of assessing whether or not they should extend credit to you.

Feel free to update your credit score every day if you’d like; it will never cost you, your wallet, or your credit score. We promise that keeping up to date with your credit score via Credit Karma will never hurt your credit; the purpose of Credit Karma is to provide you the tools and resources to better your financial fitness.

Dear Credit Karma,
What credit bureau does Credit Karma report from?

Credit Karma receives Transrisk credit scores from TransUnion, one of the three big credit bureaus.

The credit score Credit Karma provides for you are assessments based off of the Transrisk algorithm of calculating credit scores based on the main components that comprise a credit score. Credit Karma’s credit score and Credit Report Card reflects your real-life personal finances as accurately as possible, and is intended to help you monitor your credit standing and manage your finances as often as you use these tools in order to strengthen your credit health.

Submit a question now, and maybe Credit Karma will answer your question on our next Q & A blog post!

Capital One recently rebranded two great travel rewards credit cards, the Capital One’s No Hassle Miles Excellent and No Hassle Miles Ultra for Professionals, into the new benefits and sleek look of the Venture Rewards Card and VentureOne Rewards Card.

The Venture Rewards Credit Card is replacing the No Hassle Miles Ultra for Professional while the VenureOne Credit Card replaces the No Hassle Miles Excellent. The two preceding No Hassle cards that have long been one of the best value travel rewards cards, so what can we expect with its chic changes?

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The VentureOne Card offers 1.25 miles per dollar on every purchase with no limit to miles you earn, an upgrade from the No Hassle Mile’s 1 mile per dollar earning power and the biggest change from the old card. The card also maintains the same great travel rewards and generous terms as its predecessor, with no black-out dates, any airline choice, and no expiration date on miles, and best of all, no annual fee. Also, take advantage of the intro promotion of 0% APR until February 2011.

The Venture Rewards Card offers 2 miles per dollar on every purchase, same as the No Hassle Miles Ultra, but includes the luxury upgrade of 10,000 bonus miles when you spend $1,000 in the first 3 months. Cap One also improved customer service benefits with new exclusive award-winning customer service and Visa Signature benefits like complimentary concierge and travel upgrades. However, there is an annual fee of $59, a bit steeper than the No Hassle Miles Ultra’s $39 fee. Cap One will waive the annual fee for your first year, and with better customer service and bonus miles, you might find its worth its price.

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If you are willing to splurge extra for the Venture Rewards Card, the better mileage earning power and customer service upgrades may appeal to those who travel often and in luxury. But if the price tag is too steep, the VentureOne card is still a great alternative with no annual fee and a better mile-to-dollar ratio than its predecessor.

One thing to keep in mind is that both cards require excellent credit, especially with these excellent travel benefits and rewards redemption. While there aren’t huge changes to the new Venture line, the two new cards are still a welcome step up in luxury, value, and mileage earning power than the No Hassle line. These credit cards are designed with jet-setters in mind, who will love earning miles faster and at a better redemption rate with these two new cards. We definitely can’t complain about better cards and better customer service. While it’s R.I.P to No Hassle Excellent and Ultra, Venture and VentureOne are poised to take their place as our favorite travel reward cards.

The Wall Street Journal’s attention-grabbing headline is a sign of the times: Coupon Clipping Is Newest Extreme Sport. In a recession that’s left Americans struggling with at-risk loans, defaulted credit cards, slashed paychecks, and 8.4 million unemployed, penny-pinching is a practical and ever-more popular way to save money. The number of coupons redeemed rose to 3.3 billion last year, up from 2.6 billion in 2008. Sites like Groupon and RetailMeNot have taken coupon clipping high-tech, adding social networking and online access to offer consumers a fresh take on saving money the old-fashioned way.

Find more ways to make the most of your money with our personal finance roundup, plus articles and blogs to brush up on your credit health.

Personal Finance News

• Check out Maximizing Money’s top 10 ways to save when shopping online, such as utilizing blogs and online savings communities.
• Find and plug your money leaks, suggests Bargaineering blog, by signing up for bill-payment services, reviewing insurance coverages, and more.
• Once you finish paying off a loan or credit-card balance, keep writing the check but send it directly to a savings or investment account. Follow more smart tips for spending less and saving more from The Washington Post.
• Need help figuring out where to invest? Read MSN Money’s, Is there anyplace to put your cash?, for helpful market options.
• Prone to any of these 7 brainless borrowing behaviors? Bankrate.com shows you how to correct it.

Credit Report & Credit Scores News

• The recession has hurt many people’s credit scores– how to fix it?, reports The Washington Post.
• Bargaineering blogs on why we need to ban credit checks for job applications.
• MintLife’s uncovers the truth behind credit-score urban legends, like Myth 2: Shopping around for a loan will hurt your credit score — busted!
• USA Today reports that the FTC is cracking down on deceptive credit services with a new rule to help consumers avoid free credit reports that aren’t.
• Bankrate.com answers a great question on how credit score can affect your home mortgage plan.

With the national unemployment rate stagnant at 9.7%, lawmakers are hoping to spur more vigorous hiring among employers with a $15 billion bill that gives a temporary tax break to companies hiring new employees. This bill was just passed in the House and is awaiting approval in Senate.

The measure is designed to create jobs and boost employment by exempting businesses that hire unemployed workers (at least 60 days unemployed) from the 6.2% Social Security payroll tax now through December. Additionally, the bill will give employers an additional $1,000 credit if new workers stay on the job a full year.

However, lawmakers across both parties are doubtful how effective the bill will be in creating more jobs and uplift a sagging economy with nearly 15 million unemployed Americans. In fact, this current $15 billion bill is a far smaller revision of a massive economic stimulus bill enacted a year ago. Some are doubtful the bill allocation is significant enough to make a real impact. Other skeptics say the tax cut won’t necessarily generate new jobs, but instead end up going to employers who were going to hire anyway. To provide some context, an economist of Moody’s Economy.com estimates this recent job bill could create 250,000 new jobs; however the economy has shed 8.4 million jobs since the start of the recession and still counting.

Lawmakers ensure that there are more job stimulus packages on the way to further revitalize the economy. Capitol Hill will be voting on a series of job-creation measures soon, such as a $137 billion package of tax breaks and benefit extensions for industries.

Proponents for this bill promise it will provide strong incentives for businesses to start hiring again. At the very least, it addresses the unemployment support Americans have been waiting for from the Obama administration, whose popularity has been waning in recent polls. While this might be a bright spot to spur some employers to jumpstart hiring, it will rest on larger, more comprehensive job-creation measures on the Senate and House floor in coming weeks to give unemployed Americans more sustainable, long-term prospects to look forward to.