Category Archives: Debt
Don’t Let Buy Now, Pay Later Make Your Debt Problems Worse
Some of the habits we as a society have picked up during the pandemic are more useful than others. Learning to cook your favorite restaurant foods from scratch is a habit worth keeping even when in-person dining is in full swing. Conversely, doom scrolling has not done anyone any favors. Buy now pay later… Read More »
Maybe They Should Call It The Slightly Fewer Surprises Act
On paper, it looks like 2022 will be the year when medical bills impose less of a debt burden on American consumers. Medical debt is the single biggest contributor to most people’s financial struggles; nationwide, approximately $88 billion of unpaid medical bills are bouncing around from one collection agency to another and hindering people’s… Read More »
Staying Out of Trouble With Buy Now Pay Later
As the Internet will not let you forget, you know you are a geriatric millennial if you read BuzzFeed listicles, and when it’s a slow news day, BuzzFeed trots out new listicles about signs that you are rich or signs that you are poor. Making purchases on layaway has always been the province of… Read More »
Peer-To-Peer Lending For Cash-Strapped Borrowers: Friend Or Foe?
When you need money quickly in order to avoid defaulting on existing debts, the question tends not to be whether to borrow more money but where to borrow it. Taking on new debts to keep existing ones from getting bigger, or worse, being sold to collection agencies, is a necessary evil from cash-strapped borrowers. … Read More »
How Much Credit Card Debt Is Too Much?
Almost everyone uses credit cards, and almost everyone has an opinion about what constitutes safe or dangerous credit card use. The more money you have, the more choice you have about what to pay for with credit cards and when to use other sources of funding; likewise, the higher your income and the greater… Read More »
Can Fraudulent Charges On Your Credit Card Ruin Your Finances?
If you visit your parents this holiday season, ask them how different life was before the age of debit cards and ATMs. They will tell you about balancing checkbooks with pen and paper, marking your calendar as to when to send checks for the utilities and other monthly bills, and having to buy money… Read More »
Is Buy Now Pay Later Making Your Debt Problems Worse?
As John Cheese of Cracked pointed out in a series of columns at the beginning of the past decade, being poor is expensive. If you are rich, you can afford to pay the full amount for a major purchase upfront. If the purchase is so big that its price exceeds the amount of money… Read More »
Communicating With Incarcerated Family Members: A Prohibitively Expensive Lifeline
Supervillains who continue to participate in criminal acts even when serving long prison sentences rarely exist outside of fictional narratives. Most people in jail or prison are not looking to become the next Hannibal Lecter; instead, they want to finish their sentences and then go on with their lives, albeit with a new appreciation… Read More »
Predatory Lending Red Flags
As every wannabe social media influencer knows, people go out of their way to give you free stuff when you are already rich. For the rest of us, there is a mailbox full of loan offers. Not every loan shark is a sharply dressed motormouth like you see in the movies. Some of them… Read More »
Budgets Are Better At Diagnosing Financial Problems Than At Solving Them
Everyone, up to and including the hosts of the No Stupid Questions podcast, which is part of the Freakonomics network, seems to be bandying around the phrase “toxic positivity” these days, but the problem isn’t the people who always seem to remain optimistic in the face of their own problems. The people who respond… Read More »