Answers to real reader questions on debt, finance, scams, and more—expert insights to help you make smarter money decisions.
I recently had my pay cut at my job by 15%, and up to that point my family and I had already been living pretty much paycheck to paycheck. My wife had graduated from college with a bachelors degree, graduating top in her class. However, in 3 years since graduating, she has still not been …
Credit score below 550. Work 2 part time jobs. Make less than $20k. Need to buy a good used car. Moved back in with parents. File as single on tax return. Owe $7000 in back child support so, I haven’t received tax return since 2001. Probably no more than $5k in CC debt. I can’t …
My salary was cut twice in a six-month period plus my employer deducts $150 per month for health insurance. This caused financial issues and I sought a payday loan with the expectation to pay he full loan amount in two weeks. To my surprise, the tax refund I was expecting did not arrive so I …
I make approximately $65000 a year but owe $30000 in unsecured debt in addition to student loans, a mortgage (that just went up by $500 due to escrow issues) and a car note. As a side note both the house and car have negative equity. With the increase in my mortgage I am struggling to …
Hi-I’m 29 years old and received my first credit card when I was 22 with no credit history–a shiny new platinum citicard with a $4000 limit. I was in grad school at the time and for a while had some difficulty making payments on it. They even increased my limit to $5500 during this time. …
My parents are retired, and my mom has allot of debt. Too much debt for my dad to pay for, because he’s living on social security. They own a home outright though. They live in Greece now, and I’m living in there house, because my life isn’t much better. I feel resposible for recommending lloyd …
We have credit card debt and medical bills that we cannot keep up with – approximately $15,000. I am a stay-at-home Mom who works part-time in a seasonal job. My husband took a pay cut when he got re-employed over a year ago. We have creditors calling because we’ve fallen behind in our credit card …
While doing home renovations and remodeling, I opened two Home Depot cards and one at Lowes. The ‘no interest for 6 mos.’ and ‘no interest for 12 mos.’ sounded great, and I was thnking how I could pay off each “program” before the interest rates kicked in. How wrong I was! The economy went into …
In 2009 I applied through CitiMortgage then new HAMP (five times!) but always being turned down. After a few frustrating calls, I cited that I was a very good customer (never late or default on our mortgage monthly payments since 2002) and only to get BIG surprised, same answers that my diligence in paying monthly …
ESP contacted us last June. We signed up with them thinking it was a better way to lump all charges together, pay them one set amt. monthly fee, and get charges cleaned up within a five year period. it turns out that some of their representations are fradulent, or non existent, there have been long …