February 28th, 2011 Three years ago the term “loan modification” was practically unheard of, especially in the mortgage environment. Today, however, the term is almost as common as “refinance” and “home equity loan”, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. This week we’ll explore the loan modification option, as well as its credit downside. A mortgage loan modification, [...]
February 24th, 2011 Have you ever felt like your finances are totally out of control and that there’s no hope of ever recovering from the financial mayhem you’re in? Given everything that has happened and is still happening with the American economy – lost jobs, mortgages underwater, retirement accounts on life-support — this feeling of hopelessness is understandable. [...]
February 23rd, 2011 200,000 couples got engaged during this past week’s Valentine’s Day festivities. That’s roughly 10% of the engagements that will occur in 2011. And while most of these couples will soon tie the proverbial knot and profess to live as one until “death do us part”, the mechanics of the credit system don’t necessarily follow those [...]
February 23rd, 2011 The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released a study on how the CARD is being implemented and how creditors are responding. Take a look: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/22/AR2011022205985.html
February 18th, 2011 They say that the one of the biggest obstacles in balancng the federal budget is interest on the national debt. To that end, we thought that may of you might hav eproblems with the interest rate on your credit card debt. Check out this NFCC Financial Fast Fact to find out what you can do [...]
February 15th, 2011 Nice piece on the Washington Post site reporting on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that American consumers are saving more and reducing their debt. Not sure we can declare victory just yet, however. As the Post story rightly points out there is still a lot of work to be done — debt as [...]
February 15th, 2011 Today’s news that retail sales increased slightly at 0.3 percent in January is positive news on a couple of fronts. While the increase was not as large as many economists were hoping for, keep in mind that much of the country was braving intense winter storms and snow throughout much of the month. So put [...]
February 8th, 2011 What were you doing when the clock struck midnight on December 31st and ushered in 2011? Regardless of what you were doing I’m pretty sure I can guess what you were not doing. My guess is you weren’t counting down the minutes waiting for the new Risk Based Pricing rules to become effective, which is [...]
February 7th, 2011 A new report just released by the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank offers a ringing endorsement of non-profit credit counseling generally and the NFCC specifically. Some excerpts from the report: “As conversations with some of the major nonprofit consumer credit counseling providers in the Ninth Federal Reserve District reveal, the industry’s aim is to deliver services [...]