By Andrea Woroch
After months of heavy spending – and eating – people across the country start to think to themselves: this isn’t sustainable.Like clockwork, Americans make ambitious plans.January is the big month, but that’s just the beginning.Or, so they think.
According to U.S. News & World Report, by the second week of February, some
Debt Collection
Watch Your Credit Card Debt Are you keeping your credit card debt under control? Recent data from Bloomberg shows that more consumers are having a hard time doing so.
Credit card issuers reported a 3.82% charge-off rate on credit cards in the first quarter of 2019 – the highest percentage of written-off accounts in almost
Have you missed enough credit card payments that your creditor has contacted you about your debt? If so, you aren’t alone.
According to survey results from the February 2019 PYMNTS.com Financial Invisibles Report, almost two in five (36.3%) respondents had been contacted by a creditor regarding an outstanding debt.
How did many of them resolve
By Eric Olsen, Executive Director, HELPS Nonprofit Law Firm
It’s a constant struggle to stay afloat financially on disability income. Many disabled persons have credit card debt they can’t pay, often incurred before they were disabled. What can disabled persons do about telephone calls and letters from collectors? What happens if you are sued? As
By Eric Olsen, Executive Director, HELPS Nonprofit Law Firm
Federal law protects Social Security and retirement incomes from garnishment by almost all collectors. But what about the IRS and student loan debts? The IRS and public student loan lenders can and occasionally will garnish 15% of a senior’s Social Security income. There is much information
Do you have a bill that has been turned over to a collection agency? Of course, you’ll want to make things right as well as remove the negative effect on your credit score. But what if you can’t afford to pay the bill in full? Why not try to negotiate with the debt collector? They
Zombie debt refers to old unpaid debt, declared dead and uncollectable long ago, that rises from the grave to ingest the bank accounts of the living. Who are the mad financial scientists that create this zombie debt, and how can you thwart them when it comes for you?
The zombie masters, if you will, are
The Crushing Effects Of Medical Debt How pervasive is America’s medical debt problem? According to 2017 data from the credit bureau Experian, unpaid medical debt in America topped $127 billion. New data from Consumer Reports shows that almost 30% of insured Americans had unpaid medical debt turned over to collection agencies in the past two
By Eric Olsen, Executive Director, HELPS
Nonprofit Law Firm
I just got off the phone with a senior couple who have a timeshare they can’t afford and don’t use any longer. They had called a company who advertised that they help people get out of timeshares. (I hear such advertisements on the radio and television
Cleaning Up Credit Reports In April, we reported on the upcoming rise in credit scores thanks to the National Consumer Assistance Plan (NCAP). The NCAP was created by the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) as part of a settlement with state attorneys general. The NCAP objectives and other actions by the bureaus
Just like assets can be sold, so can debts. It’s possible that your auto loan or mortgage could be sold by one lender to another. If your debt is in good standing, the terms and conditions of your agreement generally apply, but things relating to the servicing of your loan such as due dates and
America’s student loan debt may be approaching a critical point with respect to repayment. According to Student Loan Hero, the total student loan debt has reached $1.48 trillion spread across 44.2 million Americans, and the latest release from the U.S. Department of Education in September of 2017 shows that default rates are climbing. According to
Do you ever feel like you are drowning in debt? Have you ever considered simply not paying your debts? What’s the worst that can happen if you refused to pay them back?
Unless you owe that debt to the “unregulated” end of the high-risk loan market, nobody named Vito is going to show up and
Has your rental application just been rejected? Determined to make lemonade out of lemons, you resolve to find out why you were rejected and change the situation so that your next application is approved.
Assuming that you filled out the application correctly and made no obvious mistakes such as bringing your pet rattlesnake or a
Normally you are on time with your payments, but somehow you managed to miss one this month. What are the consequences of a missed payment, and how do you minimize their effects?
Missing a single credit card payment may not seem like a big deal, but, as Matt Schulz, Senior Industry Analyst at CredtiCards.com observes,
Debt collectors have been known to go to great lengths to collect unpaid debts. On occasion, a debt collector will go too far and face legal action. Consider the recent case of Joseph Onwuteaka, a lawyer and debt buyer from Houston, Texas, who faces $25 million in civil penalties and another $560,000 in legal fees
You may receive calls from debt collectors trying to recover past-due debts whether you have debts or not. The calls may be from legitimate debt collectors or they may be from debt scammers attempting to extract payment for debts that don’t exist. How can you distinguish between the two?
You shouldn’t simply assume that if
A recent action by a Court of Federal Claims has effectively stopped the collection of defaulted student loans – but for those affected, this is cause for concern, not celebration. To understand why, it’s important to look at the fate of defaulted loans and how those attempting to recover from the situation are being harmed
Changes are coming to your credit report – and this time, those changes may work in your favor. Thanks to some background work by the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion), public records to be included in credit reports must meet higher standards. That action should result in a boost in credit scores
D-E-B-T has become a new four-letter word for many Americans who are struggling to pay off massive amounts of consumer debt in the form of credit cards, car loans and other types of consumer credit. The amount of aggregate consumer debt in the U.S. now tops $11 trillion (yes, trillion with a “t”), according to
Getting out of debt can be challenging, especially if you have little experience in managing your finances and need support. Using a counseling agency can be a great way to get debt relief. The agency can possibly negotiate reduced interest rates for you to pay back all your unsecured debt. You then make a single
A report issued by the Pew Charitable Trusts in July 2015, stated that 80 percent of consumers in the U.S. have some type of debt. With auto loans and student loans both topping $1 trillion and credit card holders dealing with an average of more than $7,500 in debt, many are looking for ways to
One of the consequences of the foreclosure crisis is that mortgage companies were told they needed to be more proactive in contacting and helping delinquent borrowers. However, this comes into conflict with another mandate from the administration: reducing the number of calls that consumers receive on their cellphones. With the two mandates in conflict, the
Borrowers in need of assistance between paychecks often look to various types of payday loans. One of these types of loans is called a single-payment loan, and it is secured with the borrower’s auto title. However, as with all payday loans, this type of loan often had unexpected consequences that went along with it. According