The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against healthcare company Benefytt Technologies, two subsidiaries, former CEO Gavin Southwell, and former vice president of sales Amy Brady, for lying to consumers about their sham health insurance plans and using deceptive lead generation websites to lure them in. According to the FTC complaint, Benefytt also illegally charged … Read more
Background The bankruptcy process can provide a fresh financial start for consumers who cannot pay their debts, either because of insolvency or insufficient income to meet creditor demands. Personal bankruptcy generally works in one of two ways: liquidating assets to pay one’s debts under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code or establishing a repayment plan under Chapter 13 … Read more
By Daniel Mangrum, Joelle Scally, and Crystal Wang Today, researchers from the Center for Microeconomic Data released the 2022 Student Loan Update, which contains statistics summarizing who holds student loans along with characteristics of these balances. To compute these statistics, we use the New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), a nationally representative 5 percent … Read more
Chapter 1 – I Got Hit in the Head With a Baseball and I Saw it Coming In 1990, my wife and I filed bankruptcy. We kept the secret for almost 10 years and never talked about it publicly. I felt like a failure. It was painful and embarrassing and, though there were many factors … Read more
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today released the July 2022 Survey of Consumer Expectations, which shows substantial declines in short-, medium- and longer-term inflation expectations. Expectations about year-ahead price increases for gas and food fell sharply. Home price growth expectations and year-ahead spending growth expectations continued to pull back from … Read more
In recent years, the Brooking Institution published a series of papers as part of its Future of the Middle Class Initiative. In a 2020 paper, Brookings defined the Middle Class as the middle 60 percent of the household income distribution–“not poor, but not prosperous either.” How much income must a family have to be considered middle … Read more
Have trouble getting approved for a credit card? Do you have bad credit? Maybe a debit card is an answer. But, not to spoil the surprise, it’s not. So, I’m going to help you to understand why a debit card is a much less form of payment, provides less protection from scams, and does nothing … Read more
New findings from LendingClub paint a picture of people sliding back into just getting by financially. 61% or 203 Million Americans are Living Paycheck To Paycheck, Up from 55% a Year Ago. At the same time, the average savings amount dropped to $10,757 in June 2022. People are wandering more towards the financial edge despite … Read more
Question: Dear Steve, I’m recently divorced and have gotten myself into a debt hole. As a result, I can not manage my monthly payments. I’m considering a debt relief contract with Americor. Is this a good reputable company, or is there a better option for getting out of debt? Robin Answer: Dear Robin, It is … Read more
By Andrew Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Daniel Mangrum, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw Total household debt increased by $312 billion during the second quarter of 2022, and balances are now more than $2 trillion higher than they were in the fourth quarter of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic recession, according to the Quarterly Report … Read more
