A new survey finds that African-Americans are much more likely than whites to be called by debt collectors, despite both groups reporting relatively equal levels of debt and repayment rates.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced legislation on Tuesday that would prohibit employers from requiring job applicants to disclose their credit history.
In a conference call with reporters, Warren argued that a person's poor credit history is often the result of medical bills, job loss or divorce and does not reflect his ability to perform a job.
Job-hunters are increasingly being asked to agree to allow potential employers to view their personal credit information, a development that Sen. Elizabeth Warren says is unfairly keeping people out of the job market who've had financial setbacks or have reports that contain inaccurate information.
Hank Ronan knew he would get the job. He had sailed through three rounds of interviews and hit it off with the doctors at the diagnostic center in Annandale, Va., where he had applied to be a driver for $11 an hour.
Shuttling patients to appointments was a world away from his 20 years as a software engineer, but it was the best that Ronan could find after being laid off in 2011. He was eager to get back to work and granted the doctor’s office permission to run a credit check. Ronan never heard back, he said Tuesday in an interview. [...]
Demos applauds the work of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who today introduced The Equal Employment for All Act, legislation that would prohibit the widespread use of pe
Don't use that post-surgery fog as an excuse to ignore medical bills, even if you're still contesting them with your doctor or health insurer. Otherwise, your credit score will need to heal, too.
Medical debt is the most common type of collection account, representing nearly half of all reported collections. Almost one in six credit reports contain a medical debt collection, according to the Federal Reserve. And about two in five Americans reported a lower credit rating last year due to unpaid medical bills. [...]
Credit cards can be a useful stop-gap until payday, but when paychecks aren’t enough to cover the basics and balances roll over, credit cards become an expensive way to make ends meet. Past research from Demos shows that 40 percent of indebted low- and middle-income households have used their credit cards as a plastic safety net when incomes, assets, and shrinking public programs did not afford enough to meet basic needs.
Here we go again: Home equity lines of credit are on the rise -- with a 16 percent increase forecast this year -- as more homeowners borrow against the value of their homes. The reflexive question might be: Didn't Americans learn anything from the housing bust?
Older Americans are disproportionately likely to be in debt. A 2012 Demos survey found that citizens 65 and older typically carried $9,300 on their credit cards, the most of any age group. Debt burdens are increasing, too.
Credit card fees can be expensive and annoying, there’s no doubt about it. But many of them can be avoided if you’re careful and others may be worth paying if you get something worthwhile. For example, many of the best rewards credit cards charge annual fees, but people who use them frequently are able to earn additional rewards that outweigh the extra cost.
Black veterans weren't able to make use of the housing provisions of the GI Bill because banks generally wouldn't make loans for mortgages in Black neighborhoods, and African-Americans were excluded from the suburbs by a combination of deed covenants and informal racism.
If a bad job market wasn’t damaging enough, the cost of paying off student loans does much more harm to the long-term prospects of young people than is commonly realized.
Credit reports and scores are made up entirely of information about individual consumers -- data that’s collected without our permission or even necessarily our knowledge -- but we don’t have free access to this information. Under federal law, consumers get one free credit report a year and must pay to see a credit score.
The Pew Charitable Trusts blew a major opportunity to condemn the exploitative practice of payday lending when it issued a major report on this issue a few days ago -- the culmination of over two years of careful research.
Payday lenders have found a powerful friend in the Pew Charitable Trusts. In a recent report on payday lending -- the culmination of two years of work -- Pew embraces reforms to this industry that would still allow the poorest Americans to be charged annual interest rates in the triple digits.
We are in the midst of National Protect Your Identity Week, and credit reporting giant Experian is kicking off the festivities with some ID theft prevention tips, such as signing up for Experian’s own credit monitoring service at a cost of $14.95 a month.
Don't use that post-surgery fog as an excuse to ignore medical bills, even if you're still contesting them with your doctor or health insurer. Otherwise, your credit score will need to heal, too.
Medical debt is the most common type of collection account, representing nearly half of all reported collections. Almost 1 in 6 credit reports contain a medical debt collection, according to the Federal Reserve. And about 2 in 5 Americans reported a lower credit rating last year due to unpaid medical bills.
If you think that only banks and other traditional lenders get to gouge consumers with high interest rate loans, you're obviously behind on the evolution of American finance.
These days, just about any service provider can offer loans with what used to be criminally high interest rates. And that includes doctors and dentists, as the New York Times reports today.