Consumer Confidential: Why Is a Group of Lawmakers Working to Undermine Tighter Rules for the Payday Loan Industry?
In a bizarre display of bipartisan cooperation, a handful of Democratic lawmakers have joined Republicans in trying to cripple the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The question is: Why? Most notably, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also serves as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, is co-sponsoring the deceptively titled Consumer Protection and Choice Act, which would undermine the watchdog agency’s...
Experts Warn Against Long-Term Auto Loan Trend
After a year of record new-vehicle sales, automakers, dealers, and the banks and finance companies that issue car loans are jubilantly exchanging high-fives. Analysts list several reasons for record sales of 17.5 million vehicles in 2015, including an improving economy and job market, low interest rates, cheap gas and growth in leasing. New-car sales also are being driven by easy credit: Consumers, many with marginal credit ratings,...
Consumer Confidential: When Collectors Call, Demand Proof of Your Debt
Suzanne Husted went through a rough patch about a decade ago and had to take out a pair of $300 payday loans to get by. She said she paid each back within a couple of months. Now she’s getting calls from two different debt collectors insisting that $2,400 in principal and interest is owed and that she better come across with some scratch or she’ll be dragged into court. “When I ask when I took out the loans, they say it was in 2010...
Next Big Workplace Perk: College Debt Relief
Minneapolis — A growing number of companies are dangling a recruitment perk that is tailor-made for the millennial generation: debt relief. Free snacks and gym memberships don’t hold the allure they once did for young people entering the working world. Buried under student loans of more than $29,000 on average, they want help. “For this millennial group, it’s more important than the 401(k),” said Tim DeMello, CEO and founder of...
Money Talk: Settle Home Ownership in Divorce Agreement
Question: Our daughter was divorced in 2012 from her husband of 20 years. He still lives in the house they shared and she lives elsewhere. He pays the mortgage. When she asks him to remove her name from the mortgage, he says she is harassing him. What are her legal options and steps to accomplish this? Answer: The couple’s divorce agreement should have addressed this issue. If he agreed to take sole responsibility for the mortgage,...
