31st January 2007
Establishing credit when you are young can be difficult. Most credit card companies aren't interested in opening accounts for people who don't have established credit histories. They want to lend to people that they know will pay back. But how do you g...
11th January 2007
Years ago, consumers with problem vehicles that kept breaking down even when new were at the mercy of the auto manufacturers when it came to obtaining restitution. Some owners picketed dealerships; others simply sold their cars at a loss to get rid of th...
10th January 2007
Buying and selling houses is a complicated business. If it weren't, it would not require the services of tax preparers, attorneys, appraisers, land surveyors and professional salesman. People who wanted to buy and sell property would just sell it like t...
10th January 2007
The last dozen years or so have seen the Internet explode from a small network of computers that interested only computer science students to an indispensible tool that nearly everyone uses daily. The Internet has become a vital conduit for information, ...
17th November 2006
The cash advance industry is a tremendously profitable business. In the late 1990's, the industry was hardly known, but thanks to a predominantly Republican Congress and state legislators that tend to be business-friendly, these businesses have enjoyed e...
17th November 2006
Up until twenty years ago, anyone who won a lawsuit as a result of a claim involving worker's compensation, wrongful death or accident had to accept a lump sum payment as their compensation. The payment would be intended to be invested, with the benefici...
16th November 2006
After spending most of the summer above $3 per gallon throughout most of the United States, gasoline prices appear to be dropping a bit. That may or may not be temporary; the price of crude oil is affected by many factors, and all of them are volatile. ...
15th November 2006
Owning and operating a motor vehicle is an expensive process. Besides coming up with the money to actually buy the car or truck, owners need to pay for maintenance, auto insurance and most of all, gasoline. With the price of gasoline reaching ever-highe...
15th November 2006
Buying a car or truck is an expensive proposition. With new cars often costing more than $20,000 and car loans averaging nearly six years in duration, it only stands to reason that consumers expect those vehicles to work reliably when they buy them. Som...
15th November 2006
It's expensive buying a car and it only gets more so as time goes on. Over time, the price of new cars has increased faster than the rate of inflation. This isn't entirely due to greed on the part of automakers; cars are also more complicated and useful...
09th November 2006
In today's society, borrowing money seems to be inevitable. No one pays cash for their car or their home any more; no one can afford to do so. As a society, we borrow. We take out loans from banks, credit unions and credit cards. If we don't have good...
07th November 2006
Americans have too much debt. Of that, there is no doubt. The nation, as a whole, owes something on the order of three trillion dollars. This is debt that accrues interest at rates that average nearly 20% per year, and that interest provides no real be...
20th October 2006
A structured settlement, which offers injury victims cash payments through a long-term annuity as compensation for their damages and medical expenses, offer a number of possible advantages over payment in a lump sum. While the lump sum payment is the tra...
27th September 2006
The huge surge in both real estate demand and housing prices has led to a frenzy of home buying over the last few years. This has resulted in the unlikely combination of record prices and record number of Americans who own homes. Unfortunately, interest...
07th September 2006
A lot of people like owning and driving cars, but no one likes to repair them or pay to have them repaired. But cars are like anything else; if you use them, they eventually need attention. Today's vehicles are far more complicated than the cars of a ge...
