Tag Archives: credit

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3 In 5 Americans Don’t Have Savings To Cover Unexpected Bills

From ZeroHedge:

In fact, only 38% of respondents said they have enough funds in their bank accounts to cover even the most mundane of spending emergencies. Most others would need to take on debt or cut back elsewhere…The survey found that an unexpected bill would cause 26% to reduce spending elsewhere, while 16% would borrow from family or friends and 12% would put the expense on a credit card. The remainder didn’t know what they would do or would make other arrangements.

This will not end well, for the non-savers or for the economy as a whole.

Most people I talk to are about to start saving any minute now, just as soon as they get a promotion or raise, or pay off their student loans, or one of a million other excuses not to. But there will always be something else taking up your money and attention unless you just force yourself to start saving. That mindset is their problem, not their income or expenses.

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A Whole Bunch of Rich People Just Had Their Identities Stolen

From Bloomberg:

Morgan Stanley fired an employee it said stole data, including account numbers, for as many as 350,000 wealth-management clients and posted some of the information online.

Morgan Stanley wealth management clients are pretty well-off, to put it mildly. If this can happen to them, it can happen to any of us.

It seems like every week now we’re hearing about millions of people whose personal information has been stolen from a large corporation. If yours hasn’t been compromised already, it probably will.

This is a matter of when, not if. Many of you have already had your identity stolen (including me, which figured into how I became involved in credit repair). If you haven’t had your stolen, consider it an opportunity to get your ducks in a row and be proactive.

If you haven’t signed up for credit monitoring, you need to do so. Despite the claims of various companies that provide credit monitoring, there’s not a whole lot of difference. I use Identity Monitor from Citibank.

Watch your credit like a hawk, and if anyone opens an account in your name, contact the credit bureaus and the FBI. Fill out an affidavit of identity theft.

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Smart, Successful People Make New Year’s Resolutions

It’s easy to be cynical about New Year’s resolutions. They’ve become less than a punchline these days–we hear scoffing about how gym memberships soar in January (ironically, the people doing the scoffing don’t darken the door of the gym at any time of year).

This is one instance where conventional wisdom is flat out wrong. Science has proven that people who set New Year’s Resolutions are more successful in achieving their desired life outcomes than those who don’t.

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Federal Student Debt Now over $800,000,000,000

FEDERAL STUDENT LOAN DEBT-HISTORICAL-CHART-1

From CNS News:

From November 2013 through November 2014, the aggregate balance in the federal direct student loan program–as reported by the Monthly Treasury Statement–rose from $687,149,000,000 to $806,561,000,000, a one-year jump of $119,412,000,000.

The balance on all student loans, including those from private sources, exceeded a trillion dollars as of the end of the third quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

This is federally-owned debt; total student loan debt is roughly $1.3 trillion. Think this may be a bubble? Smart money says yes.

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Couple Wins $1 Million from Bank in Suit over Repeated Debt Collection Calls

From ABC News:

Bank of America is being forced to hand over more than $1 million to a Florida couple after the bank flooded them with hundreds of loan collection calls for years – the latest example of alleged behavior that has cost the bank tens of millions.

In a complaint filed in July, attorneys for Nelson and Joyce Coniglio said that the couple had been on the receiving end of “patterns of outrageous, abusive and harassing conduct” by a subsidiary of Bank of America that included 700 calls in four years, after the bank said the couple fell behind on mortgage loan payments in 2009. The Coniglios also received “threatening collection letters asserting false and misleading information,” the complaint said.

The couple sent multiple letters from legal representation asking the bank to stop, but the calls — sometimes up to five a day — continued. The complaint describes automated calls leaving repeated pre-recorded messages.

2009 seems to have been a high-water point in this kind of debt collection. That was when I was going through my own credit card debt mess, and lots of others who were in the struggle at that time were victims of the “let’s just call them a million times and see if they’ll pay!” routine.

And hey, let’s be honest–$1 million is a pretty nice payday. This is why you document everything. Log every call. Record every call (if it is legal to do so). Take notes.

Document everything.

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Average Student Loan Debt: $28K

The College Board has released its annual reports on tuition costs and financial aid.

The punch line: students who graduated in 2013 with student loan debt had an average total of $28,400.

For most of them, this is bad. Many degrees are worthless even in a better economy and a better job market than we have right now.

The few who graduated with degrees in skilled fields like computer science and engineering will probably be fine. Other degrees, probably not. Note that this isn’t just the obvious silly majors like Etruscan Pottery or Shemale Lacrosse, but some generic business degrees as will.

College isn’t what it used to be, but most people are slow to catch on to that.