There’s been a lot of buzz lately about mobile payments technologies like Square, a little white box that plugs into an iPhone and essentially turns it into a credit card processing tool. Small business owners and entrepreneurs …
In theory, your credit score should be simple: three digits that correspond to how big of a risk lenders take when they extend credit to you. But in practice, it’s anything but.
The past few years have been rough on real-estate values and employment figures, which translates to a third category that’s been trampled in the aftermath of the Great Recession: consumer credit scores. According to research …
Hey, kids! Start saving your lawn-mowing or babysitting money. As the cost of higher education skyrockets, the amount parents are contributing has shrunk significantly since the pre-recession years. According to Fidelity …
More Americans are struggling to pay their medical bills, a hardship that could have a detrimental effect on their credit scores. According to the 2010 Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey, a sobering 29 percent — …
Despite the gains we’ve have made chipping away at our collective debt, many Americans still struggle to balance the weight of their credit card debt every month. People carrying a lot of debt have little opportunity to transfer …
If you think the British tabloid phone-hacking scandal has nothing to do with your personal financial information, think again. A consumer advocate savvy in high-tech financial security discovered that similar tricks used by hackers to break into people’s voicemail accounts could also be exploited to gain access to confidential credit …
There’s no shortage of experts offering advice about where to buy things and how to score the best deals. But sometimes, shopping smarter means not buying at all. As satisfying as it might feel to get a great deal, sometimes the …
A consortium of consumer groups led by the National Consumer Law Center submitted a detailed comment letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s a wish list of sorts, a round-up of shady business models and practices that part unsuspecting Americans from their money.
Banks have been scrambling to find ways to boost their revenue after the government stepped in to quash overdraft abuses and cap interchange fees. Free checking accounts have already become harder to come by as banks have upped …
While the Credit CARD Act cut down on a lot of the shady marketing practices credit card issuers used to target college students, there are still a plethora of cards out there for the campus crowd, and wading through them can be …
Even as school starts up again around the country, students may already be falling behind in one critical area of knowledge: How to choose and use credit cards. Unfortunately, until financial education is taught in high schools …
