Travis Plunkett
Travis Plunkett
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They've done nothing, absolutely nothing. The credit card industry has an enormous amount of power in Washington. They bottle these bills up.
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Your credit report is your passport to your essential financial information. Increasingly, what's in your credit report determines whether you'll get credit and how much you'll pay for it.
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Bankruptcy is an important safety net that families hit by unforeseen circumstances depend upon. The federal government should be bending over backwards to help Katrina's victims get back on their feet, not throwing up new barriers to bankruptcy.
caught
Once you're caught in that, you're often stuck,
bill effort either include relief serious
I think you're going to see a serious effort to include this provision either as a standalone bill or as relief legislation.
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I think the credit-card industry is reaching a tipping point,
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It is possible some could read this and say, 'they're encouraging me to pay late,' ... Paying late is never a good deal.
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People are just fed up with the approach that the large credit-card issuers have taken over the past five years. They're fed up with an increasing number of traps and tricks. They're tired of being hit with a fee every time they blink.
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Rent is often the largest chunk of a family's monthly budget. So the concern would be that these families would be tempted to use money they don't have by putting it on plastic.
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They'll never get a fresh start, ... And over the long haul, this can have a significant impact on the economy, if a large number of people can't get back to being ordinary consumers.
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If your credit card bills are completely out of control and far beyond your ability to afford them, then the relatively minor breaks that credit card companies offer to people in credit counseling may not provide enough breathing room for some people to afford a three- to five-year debt-management plan.
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By almost every measure, consumers are paying far too much for credit insurance. The research shows very clearly that credit insurance is a very bad value.
change
For some people, it's going to be not much of a change at all.
clear financial golden rule soon source talk trouble wait work
The golden rule is, Don't wait too long. Talk to them as soon as possible. Be very clear on what the source of the financial trouble is and tell them you want to work it out.