Post tagged with debt

  • New rules for debt-settlement companies

    August 11th, 201004:17 PM ET
    By Matthew Pryor
    The Federal Trade Commission has issued new rules that update our July 2009 SMI newsletter story, Settle A Debt for Less than You Owe? The Baltimore Sun provides the basics. Companies promising to settle debts for less than you owe soon won't be able to charge for their services until they do their job. The Federal Trade Commission...p...

  • Are mortgage-savings programs a good idea?

    May 28th, 201009:09 AM ET
    By Matthew Pryor
    My family recently moved and with our new mortgage came some new mortgage product offerings. One such offering is a mortgage-savings program. If you're unfamiliar with these programs, they promise to accelerate your mortgage payoff by taking weekly or bi-weekly prepayments to apply to your mortgage, in turn saving you thousands. As I was reading o...

  • Tax Freedom Day!

    April 09th, 201010:37 AM ET
    By Austin Pryor
    Today is a big day. After laboring for the first 98 days of 2010 at the behest of our governments, today we escape the bonds of servitude. This is Tax Freedom Day: That means Ameri­cans [have worked] well over three months of the year, from January 1 to April 9, before they [had] earned enough money to pay this year's tax obli­gations at t...

  • Revisiting "The Coming Economic Earthquake"

    March 22nd, 201009:30 AM ET
    By Matthew Pryor
    Echoing concerns raised by Larry Burkett in his 1994 book, The Coming Economic Earthquake, SMI Assistant Editor Joseph Slife recently wrote a "déjà vu all over again"  post about runaway government spending and debt. (Back in the day, Joseph did some of the research for the Earthquake book and produced a radio special based on it.) To ...

  • It's back-to-basics time

    November 20th, 200911:43 AM ET
    By Austin Pryor
    Allow me to repeat part of what I wrote in my October editorial: The past two years we've been dealing with [a recession], and some seasoned observers fear the worst is far from over. They advise avoiding the stock market and building your cash stockpile. Another group believes it's likely the economy has turned the corner and the market is lo...

  • "How much debt can a country carry?"

    November 04th, 200910:31 AM ET
    By Joseph Slife
    The U.S. isn't the only nation where people are worried about the long-term impact of huge levels of government spending and debt. New York Times writer Hiroko Tabuchi reported recently from Tokyo on the economic ill-health of Japan: How much debt can an industrialized country carry before the nation's economy and its currency bow, then break?...

  • Consumers jumping off the credit card wagon

    October 09th, 200909:00 AM ET
    By Mark Biller
    It's not all voluntary, and it's not always a decision made of virtuous intent. But for a variety of reasons, consumers are rapidly cutting their credit card use. Marketwatch reports that consumers cut their borrowing by nearly $12 billion in August, a 5.8% annualized rate of decline. Nearly $10 billion of that cut was credit card debt. That w...
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