Help The Middle ClassNews and Information For The Heart Of America
CREDIT CARD NEWS: Late Credit Card Payments Don’t Justify Rate Hikes Anymore (Creditcards.com)
Late payments don’t justify rate instant rate hikes anymore
Passage of the Credit CARD Act protects those who slip up once in a while
QUESTION:
My husband and I are trying to pay off our debt. I keep track of the bills on Quicken and try to pay everything early. Today I was 3.5 hours late paying a [...]
NOW THEY TELL US: Nonpartisan CBO Reports Deficit Will Be Much Worse Than Obama Says (MONEYNEWS.COM)
A new congressional report released Friday says the United States’ long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama’s grim budget submission last month.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama’s budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That’s $1.2 trillion more than predicted by [...]
Social Security Calls In Gov’s IOUs – A Case Of Bad Timing (Yahoo! News)
The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.
It’s time to start cashing them in.
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out [...]
Feds Shut Down 3 More Banks. 25 Closed So Far This Year (USA Today)
Regulators on Friday shuttered banks in Florida, Illinois and Maryland, boosting to 25 the number of bank failures in the U.S. so far this year following the 140 brought down in 2009 by mounting loan defaults and the recession.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Sun American Bank, based in Boca Raton, Fla., with $535.7 [...]
MORTGAGE WOES: 67% Of California Home Sellers Could Not Pay Their Mortgages (The Orange County Register)
Most California homesellers — a whopping 67% – who sold their homes last year couldn’t pay their mortgages, a survey by the California Association of Realtors shows.
“For the most part, the bottom line was, ‘I’m being squeezed out of my home because I couldn’t make my mortgage payments,’ ” said Leslie Appleton-Young, the association’s chief economist.
In response to another question on specific [...]
Largest US Banks Not Lending To Small Business (Business Week)
Small business customers at the nation’s 18 largest banks reported less success getting credit than customers of other commercial banks, according to a report released today by researchers at the National Federation of Independent Business conducted by Gallup.
One likely explanation for the difference: Big banks rely on automated credit scoring to make loan decisions, while [...]
MUST READ: Watch Out For The New Credit Card Traps (CNN.com)
If you haven’t heard, big changes are here for the credit card industry. On Monday the CARD act goes into effect and consumers finally get some relief from such practices as “double-cycle billing” and arbitrary rate increases.
The new act, which was signed into law last May, promises consumers more transparency about their credit card bill. [...]
New Wave Of Foreclosures By The End of 2010 is Predicted (Los Angeles Times)
About 4 million U.S. homeowners are 90 days or more delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure proceedings, Moody’s Economy.com says. A federal loan modification program is helping a relative few.
Reporting from Washington – [...]
Smaller Banks Now Offering More Private Student Loans (Bankrate.com)
Highlights
High-risk students may have better success at small banks, credit unions.
Community bank loans don’t offer the same benefits as student loans.
Shop around and ask big and small lenders for the full cost of a loan.
PARENTS & COLLEGE STUDENTS READ THIS: The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden (Wall Street Journal)
When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.
It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 [...]
