Americans are “hoarding money,” reported the Wall Street Journal January 13. “Worried about their health, their jobs and the prospect of a deep recession,” they socked away money and “amassed record savings levels.” I’m not certain what Americans the Journal was describing, but it certainly was not the average person. Meet Joe. Joe couldn’t be […]

Financial disaster looms reports Susan Tampor in a Dec. 22, 2021 article in the Detroit Free Press. Two senators and a representative in a Dec. 8 letter to President Joe Biden called it “alarming new information.” Another senator, Joe Manchin, warned of “a big hole in financial safety.” And the Detroit Free Press in the […]

His father warned him, but Josh thought nobody could fool him. As reported by a Better Business Bureau study, when Josh Reiss, 20, got an offer to join an internship program he applied for, he was eager to get going on it. The company sent him a $7,000 check and instructed him to buy a […]

It’s a wonder anyone answers the phone anymore, but people do. Scammers stole $13.5 billion from those people last year reports the Federal Trade Commission. That’s just actual scams that people fell for and doesn’t include the FCC-estimated $3 billion in time lost to time businesses wasted dealing the calls. To stem the scammer tide, […]

Millions of Americans face financial difficulties because they just “don’t get it,” their financial health on a knife’s edge. On a basic five-question financial literacy quiz, 80 percent couldn’t answer four of the five questions correctly. The world runs on money, but they don’t “get” how money works. Because of their ignorance, their illiteracy, they […]

As evictions begin in earnest with delinquent renters looking for a new place to live, Fannie Mae (the organization that underwrites mortgage loans for millions of people around the country) is making it easier for renters to buy a home. Of course, renters with an eviction aren’t likely to be candidates for Fannie’s new program, […]

Half of all renters live in SPRs, industry lingo for Small Property Rentals. The Census Bureau defines those as one-to-four family dwellings, and they make up 76 percent of rentals. Individual owners own 92 percent of them. That’s the good news. I’ll explain why in a minute. The bad news is that SPRs reported a […]

They say they didn’t mean to. They say their intentions were pure, and those intentions were bushwhacked by a “a computer error.” The April 9, 2021 issue of MIT Technology Review reported that Facebook (the company with the pure intentions) “is withholding certain job ads from women because of their gender.” An audit conducted by […]

Less than a year after the end of World War II, 1946, household debt was less than 15 percent of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Then, in the 1960s, Bank of America, offering the first credit card, BankAmericard (later renamed Visa), sent some 60,000 credit cards out to anyone and everyone in California. Of […]

Just because a debt drops off a credit report doesn’t mean a debtor doesn’t owe it anymore. Just because the statute of limitations for a debt passes, doesn’t mean a creditor can’t still collect it. We’ll look at debts and how they hang around even if people think they’ve gone away or are uncollectible. It’s […]