Articles revolving around debt related issues. These are geared towards advice for consumers and general debt news.
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
For many years I’ve written about the tactic some debt relief companies use to trick consumers into signing up for some form of debt relief. Consumers receive offers in the mail for a personal or debt consolidation loan and are told they don’t qualify, but “we have a better program.” Damon Day and I discuss … Read more
Mardis Gras parades are an ancient tradition in New Orleans, going back to the eighteenth century. Social clubs called krewes sponsor these parades, and krewe members throw trinkets called throws at parade-goers. Typically, a throw is a necklace of plastic beads, but krew members also throw toys, small stuffed animals, and plastic souvenir cups. Every year, Louisianians … Read more
The Federal Trade Commission today took action against online home buying firm Opendoor Labs Inc., for cheating potential home sellers by tricking them into thinking that they could make more money selling their home to Opendoor than on the open market using the traditional sales process. The FTC alleged that Opendoor pitched potential sellers using … Read more
