Credit Cards
A new report from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) is advocating a 36 percent interest cap rate that would alleviate the personal debt crisis in the United States.
Such a move is long overdue. The deregulation of the credit industry, which began in 1978 with Marquette National Banks of...
04/15/2013
Blog
“It's just dumb to approach retirement with a bunch of credit-card debt.”
That’s the response of one personal finance expert to a recent Demos study on older Americans and credit card debt. My research found that among low- and middle-income Americans carrying credit card...
02/21/2013
Blog
What would you do if you were laid off from a job? While you looked for a new position, you’d likely cut expenses as much as possible and begin drawing on any savings you have to pay the bills you can’t avoid. As time went on, you might turn to family, friends, and community...
12/20/2012
Blog
Joblessness imposes steep costs on millions of unemployed workers and their families, requiring households to continue meeting basic expenses without their former income.
The Great Recession and limited job growth have produced record numbers of workers who suffer from prolonged periods of...
12/20/2012
Publication
The Fed's announcement that it would keep interest rates at nearly zero until unemployment falls below 6.5 percent was, by most measures, good news. Although cheap money has proven to be no great solution to a weak economy, it has had some positive effects. Just ask anyone who has managed to...
12/13/2012
Blog
Among low- and middle-income families with credit card debt:
One-third said they are paying down balances faster in response to new requirements for clarity and disclosure on monthly billing statements.
Between 2008 (before the CARD Act went into effect) and 2012 (when the law was in full swing...
12/12/2012
Data Byte
This year’s holiday shopping season has started with a bang with 247 million shoppers (an all-time high and up from 226 million last year) spending an average of $423 each at local or online stores during the Thanksgiving Black Friday weekend.[4]According to the National Retail Federation, retail...
12/12/2012
Publication
Households identify late payments toward student loans as contributing to their low credit score.
09/05/2012
Data Byte
Sixty percent of indebted households who had college expenses for a child in the past 3 years report that those expenses contributed to their current credit card debt.
09/05/2012
Data Byte
As states continue to cut higher education budgets, rising tuition prices mean that increasingly students and their families rely on debt—both credit cards and student loans—to pay for college costs. Today, graduating college seniors leave with an average of over $25,000 in student loan...
09/05/2012
Publication
