Filed under: Debt, Consumer Ally
The Federal Trade Commission received more than 140,000 complaints about debt collectors in 2010, more than any other industry, the agency announced in an annual report to Congress.
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) prohibits unfair, deceptive, and abusive debt collection practices, and requires the FTC to submit annual reports to Congress discussing the agency’s administration of the FDCPA. (Continue the story…)
Filed under: Credit, Debt, Credit Reports
Bad credit can limit your ability to get a loan or score a low-interest rate on a credit card, but that’s not all it can do. It can also rear its ugly head in the workplace, making it harder for you to do your job or even — in a frustrating catch-22 — keep you from getting a job that could help you break your cycle of debt and poor credit.
Teresa Turner, right, a former Realtor in California whose livelihood was decimated when the real estate market crashed, knows this firsthand. When her business started to go south in early 2008, she began relying on credit cards, confident she could ride out a slow patch. Today, she’s considering filing for bankruptcy, and she suspects her problem landing a new job is directly related to the hit her formerly good credit has taken in the interim. (Continue the story…)
Filed under: Retirement, Saving Money, Retirement – 401(k)
Just because you don’t have a 401(k) at work doesn’t mean you can’t (or shouldn’t) save for retirement. There are many tools for putting money in the cookie jar and earmarking it for your old age that aren’t reserved for those with a workplace retirement savings plan. Here are five ways to set up and manage your own, employer-free retirement savings plan. (Continue the story…)
Filed under: Banking
It’s been well-documented that banks are hiking fees for users — and blaming government regulations for “making” them do it — for the past several months. But the news that Chase launched a pilot program that charges non-Chase customers a $5 ATM fee to use Chase machines in Illinois has even cynics raising their eyebrows. According to this article, the $5 ATM fee is one of many ways banks are trying to make up lost revenue they can no longer rake in on automatic overdraft charges or “anytime, any reason” credit card rate hikes.
Customers aren’t generally charged for withdrawing money at their own bank’s ATM — not yet, anyway. But a bank customer is generally dinged twice if they make a withdrawal at an out-of-network machine. The owner of the machine charges the customer’s bank a fee, which most (but not all) banks pass along to their customers with a little extra thrown in. On top of this, the owner of the machine also collects a separate fee form the customer for using the machine. In total, ATM fees let banks pull in $7.1 billion last year, and it’s clear they want this number to increase. (Continue the story…)
Filed under: Debt, Fraud, Consumer Ally
A pair of con artists who operated a service that matched payday loan seekers with lenders have agreed to pay $800,000 — as well as the proceeds from the sale of a house — to settle Federal Trade Commission charges they deceived hundreds of thousands of payday loan applicants into ordering unwanted debit cards.
According to the FTC’s complaint, Matthew Patterson, Mark Benning, Jason Strober, and Swish Marketing, Inc., operated a number of websites advertising short-term, or “payday,” loan matching services. The websites also included an online loan application form that fooled consumers into unwittingly ordering a debit card when they applied for an online loan. (Continue the story…)
Filed under: Debt, Consumer Ally
West Asset Management Inc. will pay a $2.8 million fine to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations its use of belligerent collection tactics violated federal law, the largest civil penalty ever won by the FTC in a debt collection case.
The FTC, which pursued West Asset Management as part of its ongoing campaign to protect consumers struggling to make ends meet, accused the debt collection company of violating the FTC Act and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act through false, deceptive and unfair debt collection practices. (Continue the story…)
Filed under: Debt
Cheree Miller has a cautionary tale for anyone in debt — and for anyone without an emergency fund.
Miller, 52, lives in London, Ark., (population 925) with her live-in, college-attending son, Nick, and is the caregiver to her 47-year-old sister, Tina, who has Down syndrome. Until last December, Miller, right, was also taking care of her 83-year-old mother, Millie, who passed away from complications due to Alzheimer’s disease. She works about 19 miles away, in Russellville, managing a two-doctor veterinary practice.
(Continue the story…)
Filed under: Debt
Cheree Miller has a cautionary tale for anyone in debt — and for anyone without an emergency fund.
Miller, 52, lives in London, Ark., (population 925) with her live-in, college-attending son, Nick, and is the caregiver to her 47-year-old sister, Tina, who has Down syndrome. Until last December, Miller, right, was also taking care of her 83-year-old mother, Millie, who passed away from complications due to Alzheimer’s disease. She works about 19 miles away, in Russellville, managing a two-doctor veterinary practice.
(Continue the story…)
Filed under: Retirement, Mortgages, Retirement – 401(k), Retirement Advice
Retirement confidence surveys remind me of Chicken Little. You remember her. She gathered a long line of followers who believed her warning that the sky is falling. Ultimately, she and her followers were so distracted by their fears that the fox led them to his den and something far worse than something falling out of the sky happened to them.
(Continue the story…)
Filed under: Banking, Credit, Credit Cards
The cat and mouse game continues. Americans are beginning to reap more of the benefits of 2009’s landmark credit card protection legislation, the CARD Act, even as some banks continue to add fees. The Act ordered banks to review credit card customers’ files to determine if their interest rates should be lowered. According to this National Public Radio story, it’s apparent that at least one of the “big four” banks — Bank of America — is cutting some high-value cardholders’ interest rates by as much as half, even as it adds $59 annual fees to customers who are least likely to be able to get another card from a different issuer.
“The divide that’s dividing the haves and have-nots has gotten even bigger,” Curtis Arnold, founder of CardRatings.com, tells WalletPop. “As we come out of this credit crunch, my concern is it’s almost like a disappearing middle class. That’s a concern to me as a consumer advocate, because millions and millions of consumers fall into this category,” he says. (Continue the story…)
