Do you have “frugal fatigue?” You’re not alone. Pinching pennies becomes exhausting, year after year. You dream of breaking free and buying everything in sight.
But tiresome as budgets are, consumers haven’t quit them yet. You threw some money around in December, when credit card use bumped up for the first time since the 2008 financial [...]
In marriage, what’s your biggest financial risk? That your spouse has a secret vice, and I don’t mean playing around with other partners. It’s STD in a different form – “sexually transmitted debt.” Your beloved might be hauling the burden of excess credit card spending or unpaid student loans that have grown from a molehill [...]
If you froze your credit cards in a block of ice this Christmas season, you’re part of a trend. The use of general cards such as Visa and MasterCard dropped by 11 percent in the third quarter of this year, the credit bureau TransUnion reports. America’s Research Group found that, over the [...]
So you thought your kids were safe from the scourge of credit card debt when you sent them away to college this year? Just because Congress passed a student-protection law?
Wake up to the real world. Credit card issuers found a glide path right through the law’s intent, thanks to their enablers at the Federal Reserve. [...]
If unemployment hits, which bills do you cover first? Traditionally, that would be food, utilities, transportation and housing. If you couldn’t stretch your income to cover credit card payments, you let them go.
Such thinking is so pre-2008. Since the real estate meltdown, growing numbers of straitened borrowers are changing their priorities. They’re protecting their credit [...]
