Category Archives: Debt
The Nursing Home Debt Nightmare
“Don’t get sick” is both the truest piece of financial advice and the most difficult to follow. Approximately half of adults in the United States have medical debt, and what you should do to address the debt depends largely on whether or not you are still young enough and healthy enough to work. If… Read More »
What Are Charge Offs?
In horror movies, sometimes the scariest sound is silence and the scariest sight is nothing at all. The same thing can be true with debt-related communications. As nerve-wracking as it is to receive constant reminders about debts you can’t pay, whether these reminders arrive by postal mail, email, or phone, it is even scarier… Read More »
Debt Is For Doctors, Too
The motivations for pursuing an advanced degree are various. Some people do it for bragging rights, or maybe you just wanted to let your nerd flag fly. Almost everyone agrees, though, that doctors, lawyers, and professional scientists can easily get jobs that pay six figures. If you spent years in school to get a… Read More »
Using Your Inflation Relief Check To Make A Dent In Your Debt
This summer, the state government of Florida sent $450 checks to about 59,000 families. Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida officials decided to use the $35.5 million in the state’s budget for the benefit of the Floridian families that it determined needed the money the most. Florida’s leaders have branded the checks as an… Read More »
Dirty Tricks That Collection Agencies Play And How To Avoid Them
The fifth book of Plato’s Republic, written in Greece in the fifth century, B.C. includes a reference to a riddle in which a man who is not a man threw a stone which is not a stone at a bird which is not a bird sitting on a tree which is not a tree. … Read More »
Can You Go To Jail For Failure To Pay A Debt?
Until the 19th century, imprisoning people who could not repay debts was a common practice in many countries. There are even some buildings still standing in the United States that used to be used as jails for debtors. While the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbids excessive fines and cruel and unusual… Read More »
Lending Scams To Avoid At All Costs
If you read debt-free lifestyle blogs for inspiration on how to get out of debt, you run into a lot of advice about how you should never borrow money out of desperation. This kind of advice comes across a lot like when Baby Boomers give you financial advice with the assumption that everyone has… Read More »
The Next Worst Thing To Payday Loans
Payday loans deserve their reputation as instances of predatory lending. There is a reason they are so popular, though. People who take out payday loans know that the interest rates and fees are astronomical, but they take the loans, anyway, because it is the easiest way to get the money they need to pay… Read More »
What’s Your Money Archetype?
Some of Carl Jung’s writings on psychology describe modern fictional characters and the public perception of public figures, and even individuals’ perceptions of themselves as archetypes, symbolic character types that, according to Jung, appear in the myths of most or all or the world’s cultures. Some famous examples of Jungian archetypes include the Ruler,… Read More »
Can A Balance Transfer Reduce Your Credit Card Debt?
Some credit card spending behaviors get a universally bad rap, such as taking cash advances from a credit card or using it to purchase groceries. Other credit card maneuvers, like choosing credit cards over cash in order to get reward points, have their partisans, even though others find them wasteful. If you ask five… Read More »