Hot Finance Tips

Filed under: Personal Finance, Debt

For many households, it’s a personal fiance dilemma: Should they try to pay down debt first, or build up savings? In the aftermath of the Great Recession, opinions have clearly tipped toward the ditch-your-debt side.

According to the August poll by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, Americans are choosing to deal with what they owe: 89% of those surveyed said they value paying down debt over saving money; just 11% chose saving first.

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Filed under: Company News, Economy, Credit, Personal Finance, Debt

Janet Barbour wanted to take her 11-year-old grandson Brian to Disney World, but money had been tight since her husband’s death. So the 63-year-old Barbour arranged a loan through an Internet pawn broker called Pawngo. She put up seven diamond and emerald rings as collateral for $700 at 6% a month interest, and off the two went from their Charlotte, N.C., home to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Fla. “It didn’t cover it all, but it did cover tickets and part of the gas,” she told DailyFinance.

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Filed under: Citigroup, Banking, The Price of Fame

Maybe Jackson Hurst’s gorgeous mug got him ahead in show business, but he looks even better when you consider his banking background. Hurst, the 32-year-old star of Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva (9 p.m. Sundays), worked in high finance at Citigroup (C) before shedding his gray flannel to become an actor.

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Filed under: Insurance

There’s something about life insurance that just freaks some people out. For one thing, it forces them to confront the notion of dying. For another, it demands they think about tomorrow when they don’t know what to do about today. So instead, they stick their heads in the sand.

It’s not surprising then, that according to the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education (LIFE), 40% of adults in the U.S. have no life insurance.

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