Get smart with your money
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to “whip the mortgage servicing industry into shape,” as this post on The Consumerist puts it, and such action is long overdue. Mortgage servicers have been the choke point in the mortgage mess, often costing people their homes because of their inefficiency, inaction and indifference. The CFPB wants to […]
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Dear Liz: Is there any way to expedite the foreclosure process? My wife bought a townhome shortly before we were married. Long story short, it didn’t fit our family once we got married and had a baby. We bought a larger house and tried renting the townhome but couldn’t cover the mortgage payment. We attempted […]
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Dear Liz: I have all my money (less than $150,000) in one small bank. I love my bank, but Bankrate.com’s Safe and Sound report shows the bank having only a single star. I asked someone at the bank about it, and this person said the rating wasn’t important. Is it? Answer: Of course it is. […]
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Dear Liz: My wife and I went through a foreclosure last year and need to rent an apartment. We have no credit card debt and over $30,000 in savings on an income of $75,000. We know that our credit will be an issue on apartment applications because of the foreclosure. What can we do to […]
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If you’re sick of rising bank fees, check out a new feature at NerdWallet that allows you to compare the costs of more than 120 different checking accounts across a spectrum of banks and credit unions. You’ll answer a few questions about how you use your account, including the minimum balance you can maintain and […]
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A couple of my Facebook fans haven’t gotten their taxes done because they’re missing key forms–one has a W-2 that’s incorrect, while the other is missing a 1099-R. These aren’t unusual problems, so I’m hooking you up with the resources you’ll need if you’re facing a similar situation. Here’s what to do: Gather relevant information. […]
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My good buddy Des Toups has a nice piece at CarInsurance.com about the best cars for teens. He started with the 65 cars that made the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s 2008 Top Safety Picks list, then whittled them down to those with likely price tags of $15,000 or less, average or better reliability, and […]
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Dear Liz: My husband and I are nearing 60. The company where we both have worked for over 30 years recently merged with another firm. The money in our retirement accounts, which totals several hundred thousand dollars, will be distributed to us, and we need to figure out how to manage it. We took your […]
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Dear Liz: I just bought a home and my FICO credit scores are excellent: 842, 813 and 809. I requested copies of my files from all three credit bureaus, and one of them — which showed me with the lowest score — said the reason my score wasn’t higher is that I had “too many […]
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Here’s a recent post from Credit.com where a bunch of us money types hold forth about the lottery: Mega Millions Madness: Money Pros Weigh In (via Credit.com) Let’s face it. When it comes to things like lottery jackpots, personal finance experts and writers tend to be wet rags. We usually put lottery ticket purchases in […]
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