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

New research illustrates ways in which the current economic difficulties of African American households are compounded even further by a legacy of discriminatory policies that have left African Americans with significantly fewer assets and lower rates of homeownership than white households.

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

“Must have good credit.”

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.

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.

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

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.