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A Credit Card Glossary of Terms
The Credit card industry comes with a lot of jargon. You can't
be expected to recognise all the technical phrases employed and
some of them could be very important. Listed below you will find
a quick description of the most common credit card...
Ask the Credit Counselor
Q: I am getting married soon. My credit is great, but my husband can’t even get a credit card in his own name due to past credit problems. How will his credit affect mine? A: The good news is that the credit histories of spouses are not merged. In...
Be Prepared When You Apply For A Credit Card
Getting and having a credit card can be a beneficial thing for most people. You will have a big advantage when you have a credit card. A credit card can be especially useful when you want to purchase items remotely. Think how much easier it is to...
How To Get A Credit Card With No Credit History
Oddly enough, not only will bad credit work against you when applying for a loan or a credit card, but so will NO credit. Even though this doesn't seem fair, it's the way things work in the complicated world of consumer credit. Lenders are leery...
What To Do When Your Credit Card Is Lost Or Stolen
Unfortunately, wallets and purses do get stolen or lost on a regular basis. Your biggest concern is usually the fact that your credit cards are missing. If this happens to you, do you have a plan of action? Well, you should. It really isn't as...
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Credit Counseling – Get in Line Now to Avoid the Upcoming Rush
Credit counseling is a valuable service for consumers who have trouble managing their finances. A distinctly different service from debt consolidation, credit counseling assists consumers with problem debt by educating them about the basics of money management. Americans really don’t get the education they need about how to manage bank accounts, balance checkbooks, or pay bills on time, and credit counseling can provide these services as well as others. By educating consumers, counselors hope to reduce the number of debtors who are forced to file for bankruptcy. Anyone whose financial situation is such that they would benefit from credit counseling may wish to seek it out in a hurry, however. A number of different factors are coming together in such a way that the counseling industry may soon be completely swamped with more clients than it can handle.
Recently passed bankruptcy legislation, designed to reduce the number of consumer bankruptcy filings, will now make credit counseling mandatory as a prerequisite for a bankruptcy petition. Anyone who wishes to file for bankruptcy relief must first demonstrate that he or she has undergone credit counseling during the past six months. By requiring counseling as a condition of debt relief, Congress hopes to reduce or eliminate repeat filers. The counseling industry is preparing for the additional customers now, as the new law is set to take effect in October 2005.
Other factors will weigh heavily on the counseling industry, however. A 2003 law passed by Congress requires credit card companies to raise their minimum payments so that their customers can repay their balances more quickly. This has resulted in the near-doubling of
minimum payments, and the average American household, which has a credit card balance of $10,000, will see their minimum monthly payment rise from $200 to $400. Since many households can only afford the minimum payment now, the hike in the minimum due may drive more Americans into counseling and bankruptcy.
The increased reliance upon interest-only mortgages and low-interest adjustable rate mortgages could be a factor, too, if home prices either fall or fail to increase as they have. The sky-high prices in many markets have led homebuyers to purchase more homes than they can really afford, often using mortgages that are themselves riskier than the traditional 30-year loan. Should interest rates rise or housing prices fall, tens of thousands of homeowners will find themselves with loans that either exceed the value of the home or are unaffordable.
Those in the credit counseling industry say that this is a critical time, and the combination of new laws, fragile markets, and credit card industry overhaul could push a number of consumers towards bankruptcy and mandatory counseling. Anyone with problem debt who might benefit from counseling should consider doing so sooner, rather than later, as qualified credit counselors may be quite busy this fall.
About the Author
©Copyright 2005 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to informational Websites, including End-Your-Debt.com, a site devoted to debt consolidation and credit counseling, and HomeEquityHelp.com, a site devoted to information regarding mortgages and home equity lending .
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| AnnualCreditReport |
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| Springboard - Non-Profit Consumer Credit Management |
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| Credit referencing and consumer targeting for the USA and other countries. |
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| National Credit Union Administration - Home Page |
| An independent federal agency that supervises and insures 7152 federal credit unions and insures 4240 state-chartered credit unions. |
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| Credit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Debits and Credits, a type of bookkeeping entry; Credit (creative arts), acknowledging the ideas or ... Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit" ... |
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| Credit (finance) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Any movement of financial capital is normally quite dependent on credit, ... Sometimes if a person has financial instability or difficulty, credit is not ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
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| The National Foundation for Credit Counseling |
| DebtAdvice.org is a service provided by the Members of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), most of them known as Consumer Credit ... |
| www.nfcc.org |
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| FreeCreditReport.com | Free Credit Report and Credit Score Online ... |
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| Ford Credit provides auto financing to finance a lease or purchase a car or truck through Ford, Lincoln or Mercury dealerships. |
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| The Credit Card Prank |
| In my lifetime, I have made nearly 15000 credit card transactions. ... Credit card signatures are a useless mechanism designed to make you feel safe, ... |
| www.zug.com |
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| Credit magazine, corporate bonds, derivatives, structured credit ... |
| Credit magazine provides information on the international credit markets for credit investors, issuers and market professionals. |
| www.creditmag.com |
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| CUNA: The Credit Union National Association |
| News and resource directory about credit unions. |
| www.cuna.org |
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| Credit/Debt Management - Tools and Advice for Managing Credit and Debt |
| Drowning in debt? Trying to improve your credit score? This is the place for you. Get real world information and tips, as well as the legal low down, ... |
| credit.about.com |
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