Despite all sorts of financial worries including the current housing market mess consumer spending in November rose to its highest amount in over three years.
The Commerce Department reported that consumer spending increased by 1.1 percent in November, which is nearly three times the October gain. Some experts suggest that the gain reflected various promotional efforts […]
Holiday spending this year by American consumers is going to be a mixed bag between credit card purchases and cash purchases. According to the National Retail Federation, it is expected that Americans will spend nearly $475 billion during the holiday period this year and that much of that will be bought with credit cards.
This should […]
Interest rates for refinance loans are falling, and that is good news for many homeowners, but home values are also falling in some areas of the nation, and that is bad news. In fact, this strange combination of events is causing some problems for many consumers who wish to refinance their high interest mortgage loans […]
The US housing mess is far from over, it seems. Foreclosure filings almost doubled in October as compared to the same month one year ago. This is only the latest indicator that homeowners are continuing to fall behind on their home payments and that many of them are losing their homes to foreclosures.
In October of […]
Ever wonder what the rest of the world spends on Christmas shopping? Some studies have been conducted and the results may surprise you.
In general, the British will spend more this year on Christmas than Americans and Australians. In fact, they will spend, on average, three times more. The study conducted by the UK-based APACS discovered […]
First is was phishing, and now it is vishing. Credit card scams are everywhere it seems. This newest one is cunning, to be sure. Here is how it works.
You get an email that reads something like: Please be aware that your VISA card has been disabled and you will not be able to use the […]
Experian has recently announced that it is teaming up with Discover Financial Services to provide what they are calling Credit Score Tracker. This is a comprehensive tracking product for credit scores and is being offered to over 50 million current card members.
Credit Score Tracker can assist Discover card holders to understand what issues affect their […]
There is one thing you can count on from crooks and scam artists and that is when good people are in trouble they - the scam artists - will come out of the woodwork with all kinds of offers to “help”. With many of today’s consumers facing dire times with mortgage debt, credit card debts, […]
With more and more consumers facing critical debt issues from high mortgage payments that they cannot always make on time to insane credit card bills each month, it is no wonder that debt collectors are working overtime to get borrowers to pay what they owe. But there are some rules as to what they can […]
In very simple terms, there are two types of bi-weekly prepay mortgage plans: those that charge fees for this service and those that do not charge fees. In both cases, they do, indeed, lower the amount of interest that you will have to pay on your mortgage loan, but is paying fees for this service […]