Since 1992 the increase in student loan defaults is becoming a crucial problem in the United States, as more and more people are defaulting on their student loans. Graduates face a future of collection agencies, possible legal action, garnished wages and increased hurdles to get future loans or make major purchases, not to mention a [...]

Student loan consolidation is a process by which the U.S. Department of Education or a private lender will pay off the balances of all your outstanding loans, taking the total amounts of the payoffs of these loans, and combining them into one new loan called a consolidated loan. This process normally gives the borrower an [...]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ve heard the buzz: bird flu, avian flu, pandemic. Heck, even Ted Koppel admitted he’s been doing outside reading on the Flu’s origin. What does it all mean? Is it really cause for concern? As always it’s best to educate yourself on the [...]

There are 3 distinct levels of business credit ranging from “Easy to get” to “difficult” to get. The key to obtaining business credit is to make your business worth the risk for lenders. This may take time and is often achieved by taking steps up the various levels. How fast you take these steps depends [...]

Completing Exit Counseling for a Student Loan When you are getting ready to leave college, your financial aid office will send you a notice that you are required to complete exit counseling for your federal (Perkins, Stafford and Graduate PLUS) student loans. Failure to do so could mean that your college will place a hold [...]

When many people first hit the financial streets, one of the first things they do is apply for credit cards. Marketing and advertising can be blamed for the perception that without a credit card an individual is going to be locked out of many of life’s pleasures and it usually does not take long for [...]

It may have felt good when all of those credit card approvals started appearing your mailbox and when the local department stores granted you one of their credit cards. It all seemed to come together right after you bought that new house and a second car and everything in your life seemed to be going [...]

Within a year after changes in the banking laws allowed banks to own branches across state lines, bank consolidation allowed about 25 percent of the banks in the United States to own over 50-percent of the banking assets. While this has led to a continued concern about the long-range effects the new laws will have [...]