As mentioned in my introductory post, there are “5 Steps to Get Out of Financial Purgatory“. We’re going to focus on each individual step in this blog series, so you can understand how and why each is important, and maybe use some of the information to make changes in your own financial life. Step one […]
Debt Bytes Blog
5 Steps to Get Out of Financial Purgatory
I know Purgatory sounds like a bad place to be, but it really comes down to the fact that you are, or have been, financially “stuck” for awhile. The way you manage or don’t manage your money can play a huge part in this, but the good news is that it’s only temporary and there […]
How Low Interest is Affecting Canadians
Back in January 2015, the Bank of Canada made the surprising move of lowering the key interest rate from 1 per cent to .75 per cent, shocking those who thought a rise was inevitable. But surprise factors like an oil price plunge forced the Bank’s hand, as they made the first adjustment to the key […]
Can Work At Home MLM and Network Marketing Provide Full Time Income?
I spend much of my time helping people figure out how they can get through a tough financial situation that often peaks with the inability to pay bills. This means I am most often speaking to people for the first time when they have debt emergencies and late stage debt collection issues. This is not […]
Filing a CFPB Complaint
Throughout this website, and several others I contribute to, I suggest people file complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). I am usually responding to reader comments when I do, so the reason for suggesting filing the complaint is contained in each comment exchange, but only briefly. I want to be sure readers have […]
Recognize and Review a Debt Collector
Complaints about debt collectors number in the ginormous every year. The volume is somewhat understandable. I mean… how many other professions do you spend nearly all of your time trying to get someone to do something they cannot or will not do? Let’s face it, getting people to pay bills they likely can no longer […]
How will contacting a collection agency restart credit reporting or time limits to sue?
Dear Michael: “My daughter has medical bills from 2008 when an emergency situation arose and she was not covered under insurance. She recently checked her credit report and contacted the collection sites to see if they were really hers. If you contact the collection agency, does this restart the ‘7.5’ years on your credit report? […]
Why Women aren’t Talking about Money
A recent study by Fidelity Investments has uncovered some intriguing paradoxes about women’s relationship with money. Despite the fact that 92 percent of the women involved in the study want to learn more about financial planning, and 83 percent want to get more involved in their finances in the next year, a whopping 80 percent […]
5 Ways to Fix the Student Loan Debt Problem
The U.S. Department of Education recently unveiled a new and improved methodology for calculating student-loan payment delinquencies. Where it once figured the late-payment rate of student loans as a whole to be 17%, the department has now determined that when the same data is expressed in terms of individual borrowers, it’s as high as 38%. […]
9 Plead Guilty to $20M Scheme to Defraud Soldiers.
Eight Alabama residents and one Georgia resident pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme in which they stole thousands of identities to file more than 7,000 false tax returns, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Alabama. Over the course of nearly three years, the group defrauded the government of approximately […]