One reader of Bob Dahms’ “Ask SCORE” column – courtesy of the Bellingham Herald – is concerned that his weak credit score and blemished credit report will negatively affect an equipment loan he is planning to take out for his business. Dahms gets straight to the point by recommending that the reader obtain a free [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Finance'
Understaffing “Key” to Fannie Mae; Freddie Mac Foreclosure Failures
Finance
What happens when you hire ten employees to do the work of twenty ? While the ratio is not exactly spot-on, this understaffing of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is one reason why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not able to effectively deal with the surge of foreclosure listings they received since 2007. [...]
Tags:
EHLP Ends with $568 Million of $1 Billion Unspent
Finance
While most other government assistance programs are struggling with deficits and budget cuts, one particular program has effectively ended with more than half its funding left unspent: the Emergency Homeowners Lending Program (EHLP). This was because the officials in charge could not approve applicants fast enough to receive the aid in time. This resulted in [...]
Tags:
Real Estate Still “Good Investment Diversifier”
Finance
It would not be surprising if a prospective investor is fearful of putting money into real estate, especially if that investor looks at how the market took a beating these past couple of years. Jeffrey Hanson of Grubb & Ellis Equity Advisors LLC, however, is not so quick to rule out real estate as a [...]
Tags:
How to Pay Off a $92,000 Credit Card Debt in 5-and-a-Half Years
Finance
Jerry and Sue Bailey live in Michigan, and they have done something that few middle-class Americans would be willing to shoulder: paying off $92,000 in credit card debt in just under five and a half years. They accrued such a massive amount of debt by running up 17 different credit cards from 1992 to 2005. [...]
Tags:
How Do You Deal With the Credit Repercussions of a Long-Forgotten Bill?
Finance
“For readers wondering how a five-year-old delinquency can show up without warning, the answer is that utilities usually don’t report to credit bureaus.” This is what Bankrate.com’s Steve Bucci has to say in his column about years-old bills that pop up one day and end up hurting your credit score. He goes on to add [...]
Tags:
Want a Real Economic Stimulus and Jobs Plan? Forgive Student Loan Debt!
Finance
This is the headline of an online petition spearheaded by Robert Applebaum, wherein Applebaum seeks to gather 290,000 signatures to support House Resolution 365. The resolution was introduced by Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-MI) and is designed to “cut the United States’ true debt burden by reducing home mortgage balances, forgiving student loans, and bringing down [...]
Tags: Student Loan Debt