Filed under: College, Career, Travel, Recession, Recession Diaries
Having trouble finding a job? Better yet, are you still unsure of the perfect career for yourself? Daniel Seddiqui found himself in both of these positions when he graduated with a degree in Economics from the University of Southern California. As he told the New York Daily News this week, he failed 40 interviews and received no feedback from any prospects on his first attempt to find a job. Basically, he was stuck, and he needed to generate some income.
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Filed under: Banks
Like looking at a car wreck, here’s a Web site you won’t want to miss.
If you Google the words, “Bank of America,” an advertisement comes up for LetsTalkBanks.com. It’s a site solely devoted to trashing Bank of America.
And it has a video with (supposedly) Bank of America employees griping about the bank. The employees are in shadows, and their voices, disguised, making it all very ominous, of course.
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Filed under: Banks, Shopping, Simplification, Technology
For a while Google has been protecting users of its popular Gmail service from phishing e-mails by rejecting any message it knows is fake from senders such as eBay and PayPal.
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Filed under: Credit, Debt
Credit card company policies that drastically cut people’s available credit over the past two years did their damage to credit scores as expected. Credit Karma, in its trend study, reported today that according to its June Credit Score Climate Report the current average U.S. consumer credit score was 674 in May. That’s down almost 20 points since 2007 according to Experian’s National Score Index. That index showed that during a six month period between January and June of 2007 the average credit score was 692.
As credit card company actions drive credit scores down, banks continue to make it difficult or much more expensive to get credit with scores below 720. In most cases you must have at least 20% to put down on a home to get a mortgage, unless you work with the FHA if your credit score is below 720. Some banks want even higher scores. (Continue the story…)
Filed under: College
The new income-based repayment program for federal student loans has been getting a lot of favorable press lately, and not entirely wrongly.
Here’s how it works: If you have federal student loans and are having trouble making payments, signing up for the IBR program will cap your monthly federal student loan payments at 15% of whatever your income is over $16,000 per year. If you earn less than $16,000, you don’t have to make any payments. Any money you owe after 25 years is forgiven.
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Filed under: Insurance, Travel
I’ve heard of travel insurance, but never this kind.
French travel agencies have started offering insurance to cover bad weather.
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Filed under: Credit, Debt, Investing
After a nine-month hiatus, peer-to-peer lender Prosper.com is back with a new and improved lending service. Thanks to its recent SEC registration the improved Prosper.com is now available to borrowers in 46 states and lenders in 14, with plans to expand nationwide in the near future.
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Filed under: Credit, Debt
Millions of credit card holders are being shifted from fixed rate credit cards to variable rate cards primarily because of a loophole in the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act, which was supposed to protect consumers from large interest rate increases, spiraling fees, and changing terms.
The bill might have passed with great fanfare and promises of protection against unfair rate increases, but the credit card companies have already found a loophole to avoid the bill. The bill was designed to give card holders fair warning about rate increases, but still allows for credit card companies to raise rates without giving any notice or warning, even after the bill goes into effect, if the card has a variable rate.
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Anyone who thinks smoking isn’t a costly addiction should ask Josh Muszynski, who went to