Nearly 1.6 million past due federal student loan accounts are getting some much needed assistance. USA Funds says they’ve prevented nearly $26.5 billion in defaults from student loan accounts during the last fiscal year. These were accounts where payments were reported to be 60 days or more past due. During fiscal 2011, USA Funds’ default recovery efforts collected more than $1.3 billion. Nearly $652 million of these cases required loan rehabilitation, which has the added benefit of clearing the student loan default from the borrower’s credit record.
The program saved taxpayers an estimated $25 billion and student loan borrowers around $8.8 billion in costs.”These hard economic times are challenging many student loan borrowers to keep up with their monthly payments,” said Carl C. Dalstrom, USA Funds president and CEO. “Fortunately, federal student loans offer a variety of options to help borrowers cope with payment problems. USA Funds i
Read more…
Bank of America just announced that 38.7 million of its customers will soon receive a $5 fee for swiping their debit cards. The Credit Union National Association is responding with a call to consumers, saying there is another option where fees are lower and service is better. “We want consumers to know they can fight back against big banks by saying no to more fees. They should give credit unions a close look and take advantage of credit unions’ emphasis on service over profits, typically with fewer and lower fees overall,” said Credit Union National Association CEO Bill Cheney. “When free checking at banks seems to be disappearing, our surveys show 8 out of 10 credit unions still offer at least one free checking account with no minimum balance requirement and no maintenance or activity fees,” Cheney added.
Consumers can go to asmarterchoice.org which provides information about credit unions and helps consumers find one they are eligible to join. “Almost ever
Read more…
Whether you have been forced to use up your savings because you are unemployed or haven’t built up an emergency savings fund, when a financial crisis occurs you need immediate access to money. While the best-case scenario would be to have a savings account with available cash, many Americans don’t have one. When a car repair is needed for you to get to work or your child needs an expensive prescription to get over an illness, the money has to come from someplace.
Zywicki says one of the consequences of the 2009 CARD (Credit Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act) is that credit card companies have reduced credit limits, declined to offer credit to more consumers and have started charging higher interest rates and fees to new customers. Consumers with low incomes and bad credit are the hardest hit by these changes and therefore sometimes turn to advance payday loans which have higher interest rates.
More recently, the Durbin Amendment lowered the amount of money banks can earn on debit card transactions.
Read more…
We all know the economic state of the country in pretty bad, and heres a visual representation of one factor of the economy unemployment.
You can see that despite the rhetoric (and trillions of dollars in spending), the unemployment rate hasnt moved much. This first graph covers the unemployment rate from the start of the recession to August, 2011. The August figure is important because its the first time in over 40 years that the U.S. economy produced a net 0 new jobs.
The second graphic shows major U.S. cities that are losing or gaining the most jobs. Its important to note that this data is NOT seasonally adjusted.
All the data is from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and presented as an infographic courtesy of the folks at Visual.ly
Autumn is well and truly upon us, and the drop in temperature could mean you end up with higher household bills. One area of household bills which you can save on is water, read on to find out how!
Every day, each of us uses 150 litres on average with water bills eating into a large chunk of the household spending- every drop counts. In these tough economic climates with increasing debts and increasing bills, it is time to stop the leaking taps, leaking pounds.
So what is the real cost of ‘spending a penny’?
With toilet flushing counting for 30% of water used in a household, it really is money down the pan. We however, have a solution which could help you save water and save money the ‘Save a Flush’.
Weve teamed up with United Utilities to offer ClearDebt and Abacus clients a Save a Flush pack free of charge. These Save a Flush packs come with installation instructions and other tips for saving water in the home. Once inst
Read more…
Where there is a budget surplus you should apply those funds towards clearing the debt that you are paying the highest rates of interest on.
Where you have accounts that offer a discount for early payment you should also take advantage of those discounts by applying the budget surplus towards them.
Until you have cleared your debt you shouldnt consider using the surplus for investing, as the money you will receive from the investment, less the tax that you will pay on that income, will be less than the amount you will save in interest payments for clearing debt.
Always look for the most benefits for each dollar spent and in almost all cases there is no better benefit than clearing debt.
Of course once you get to the stage where you have your finances in order and everything is under control budget surpluses can be better spent on investing in appreciating assets such as property, provided the property market is rising, and only where you will be able to make more money from borrowing to buy the property than you would using the money elsewhere.
That is something you can look forward to once you have managed your debt and with your ability to budget well you will be able to calculate the ratio of income to expenditure and determine whether it is a good investment that you will be able to handle comfortably before you spend your money.
You will be able to make all your decisions based on simple steps that will eliminate all the guesswork and ensure that you dont get into financial difficulty again.
Sometimes you only need to change a few factors in your life to go from a budget deficit to a budget surplus and that is what you will be aiming to do as soon as possible.
Read more…
Recent Comments