The reports of snail mail’s death have been greatly exaggerated! Why? Just look at all those offers for credit or personal loans that show up. You can also turn on Sirius XM radio and get a steady dose of commercials touting online lending offers. While most are legitimate and can actually help, some are traps. [...]
It was bound to happen. For many years, we’ve been benefitting (unless you’re a saver) from low interest rates the Federal Reserve has engineered to help prop up the economy following the Great Recession. Low interest rates meant low borrowing cost. But, what goes down, must go up (take that Sir Isaac!) If you applied [...]
In the good ‘ol days, we had a nice neat hierarchical order to the credit lending – a prime lender, near-prime lender, and subprime lender. Well, those days are gone! Consumer finance (and even patient finance) lending has morphed and the lines have blurred. Today, you see traditional prime lenders “digging deeper” or approving lower [...]
Whether you’re a business offering financing options to consumers or you’re a consumer out looking for ways to pay over time for the things you want, you’ll be interested to know that financing programs are not static. The old adage “Nothing is certain but death and taxes” rings true when it comes to lending options [...]
The advertisements are everywhere. They’re on TV, satellite radio, mail, web browsing, and social media. Lenders want you to bring your outstanding balances to them with the promise of a lower rate, which may or may not be true. It sounds like a good idea – make three or four different payments become one. But, [...]
Some journalists have been sounding the rising debt alarm bell. While I’m not worried about current debt levels, I do take solace in the concerns being raised, as there was none of that pre-2008. What I will attempt to do in this post is to break household debt down for you. The Federal Reserve Bank [...]
So, your credit score is nothing to write home about and you really need (or want) that large purchase. You can fit a personal loan payment in to your monthly budget, and making timely debt payments helps to improve that credit score, so that you can eventually write home about it! But, you cringe at [...]
Key takeaways from a personal loan marketplace study Supermoney put out a detailed and well discussed state of the personal loan marketplace. Key take-aways from the study are as follows: The consumer lending market is a favorite source of credit for millions of consumers and it’s growing. Household expenses, debt consolidation, and medical expenses are [...]
For those old enough to remember this hilarious sit-com (yes, I’m in that crowd!), will remember how at odds Felix and Oscar were. Lack of trust, disapproval, disgusted with each other, and not wanting to be together best describes the relationship those two had. Well, that kind of sounds exactly how the retail sales associate [...]
When you look at chain retail stores, those with more than a few locations spread out over different geographies, that sell “big-ticket” goods – jewelry, furniture, etc. – they have something in common you don’t typically think of. Yes, they can have similarities in advertising and marketing, purchasing, sales floor operation, and even online presence. [...]