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5 Credit Card Offer Tricks to Watch Out For in 2013
Tweet Share on Facebook January 9, 2013 CommentIf you’re like me, chances are your mailbox is flooded with credit card offers that sound too good to be true. Credit card companies are known for tempting us with juicy offers and sometimes we take the bait. Unfortunately, some cards that sound too good to be true probably are. Don’t let the bright red, bold lettering fool you.
The good news is you can sort out the good from the bad by reading the disclosures. Here are some credit card company tricks consumers need to know about:
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7 Tips to Win the Perfect College Scholarship for You
Tweet Share on Facebook January 8, 2013 CommentThere are thousands of scholarships available to students every year, but the competition is fierce and finding the right scholarship can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are things you can do to secure the funding you need for tuition, books, and other education expenses. Identifying opportunities you are eligible for and exploring a variety of opportunities can increase your chances of success. You’ll also need to be organized and stay on top of multiple deadlines.
Here are seven tips to help you find the best scholarship opportunities:
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Fiscal Cliff Averted: What That Means for You and Your Taxes
Tweet Share on Facebook January 7, 2013 CommentIt looks like 2013 is off to a good start. With the passing of The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 on New Year’s Day, Americans not only avoided going over the “fiscal cliff” but we may also end up seeing more money in our pockets.
The Relief Act includes a permanent patch of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and the permanent reduction of tax rates, as well as the reinstatement of various tax deductions—the Educator Expense Deduction, the Tuition and Fees Deduction, and state sales taxes in lieu of state income taxes, among others.
Here’s a breakdown of the Relief Act and how it will impact the size of your wallet:
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Is a Reverse Mortgage Right For You?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 4, 2013 CommentA reverse mortgage can be a helpful option to people 62 years of age or older, enabling them to convert part of the equity in their home into cash while still maintaining homeownership. It is called a reverse mortgage because the mortgage flow is reversed: Instead of making monthly payments to a lender, the lender makes payments to the borrower in the form of a line of credit, a monthly payment, or a lump sum payment.
As long as you live in the home, you are not required to make any monthly payments toward the loan balance, but you must remain current on your tax and insurance payments.
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5 Financial New Year's Resolutions to Consider
Tweet Share on Facebook January 3, 2013 CommentWith all of the holiday madness now behind us, you can carve a little time out to consider what you want to accomplish this year. Things will be different, no doubt. Even with a compromise being reached for the fiscal cliff, it's likely to take a bite out of your budget. With that in mind, consider the following five financial tips to maintain a healthy budget during the New Year, in spite of an ailing economy:
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Did Generation X Cause the Housing Crisis?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 2, 2013 CommentThe housing crisis resulted in a great deal of finger pointing. Politicians blamed Wall Street, Wall Street blamed government, and each political party blamed the other political party. What gets lost in the drama of political theater is that real people signed mortgages that could not be afforded. Somewhere in the buck-passing, we are left to wonder what happened and how financial consumers can avoid future foreclosure catastrophes.
A paper published by the St. Louis Fed, titled “The Foreclosure Crisis in 2008: Predatory Lending or Household Overreaching?” gives us an idea of the financial state of the average household in foreclosure during the housing crisis. The paper compiled characteristics of debtors in foreclosure during the recession and classified these struggling households using PersonicX Life Stage Segmentation, a classification that divides households into 21 groups based on socio-economics, marital status, and household size. Researchers found a number of trends in the collected data worth taking note:
