Today’s experience with credit card issuers topped the tale I was told last week by a new client of hopeless insolvency and an enhanced credit offer from a card holder to whom she already owed half of her annual salary: today’s offer of a new credit card was delivered to my client at the address […]
Taking my own advice
I’m being hounded by bill collectors; or, more precisely, ATT’s long distance arm. You see, I called up and canceled my long distance service at home after seeing that my marvelous “plan” cost me $13 a month whether or not I made any long distance calls. The guy in the call center overseas tried to […]
Student loans & deciding who to pay
Those in a financial bind have to make hard decisions about who to pay when there isn’t enough to pay everyone. The most aggressive creditors, the credit card companies, have the lowest priority in my view of who should get paid. Shorting your obligations for housing, car payments, taxes and student loans all have far […]
Universal Default Provisions Cause Defaults
In the space of 24 hours this week, I saw two clients with substantial credit card debt who had been servicing that debt faithfully and at a substantial sacrifice , hanging on to the slippery financial slope, when a single irregularity in payments to one creditor sent their interest rates from 4-9% to 30%. For […]
Card Companies Charge Forward
At a hearing on the effect of the bankruptcy “reform” bill held in the Senate right after the fall elections, the American Bankers Association piously testified about the care with which its member banks solicit new credit card accounts. The blame for debt that a consumer could not repay was not, they recited, the result […]
