Tag Archives: Payday Loans
‘Being poor in America is a full-time job’: The astronomical cost of banking while poor
Feb. 6, 2020. Paul Constant, Business Insider – The commutes of poor Americans are often longer than those of middle-class Americans. Buying less expensive, low-quality products — say, a cheap pair of boots with cardboard soles — often results in a larger outlay of money over time than a slightly more … Read More ›
Can You Afford That Payday Loan? Feds Say Lenders Should Ask
by James Rufus Koren, Los Angeles Times
At the heart of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposal is a requirement that lenders determine that a borrower has the ability to repay. Read More ›
Why Is The UC System Investing In A Payday Lender Accused Of Trapping Consumers In Perpetual Debt?
by David Lazarus, Los Angeles Times
The university has invested millions of dollars in an investment fund that owns one of the country’s largest payday lenders, ACE Cash Express. … [The CFPB] has found that only 15% of payday loan borrowers are able to repay their loans on time. The remaining 85% either default or have to take out new loans to cover their old loans. Because the typical two-week payday loan can cost $15 for every $100 borrowed, the bureau said; this translates to an annual percentage rate of almost 400%. Read More ›
Supreme Court Rejects Class-Action Suit Against DirecTV
by Robert Barnes, Washington Post
“These decisions have predictably resulted in the deprivation of consumers’ rights to seek redress for losses, and turning the coin, they have insulated powerful economic interests from liability for violations of consumer protection laws,” wrote [dissenting Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. … “It has become routine, in a large part due to this court’s decisions, for powerful economic enterprises to write into their form contracts with consumers and employees no class-action arbitration clauses … further degrading the rights of consumers and further insulating already powerful economic entities.” Read More ›
Abusive Lending Practices Can Lead To Negative Long-Term Consequences For Borrowers, Communities
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
If a borrower has one abusive loan, they may be more likely to struggle with their other debts. This can lead to stressed household finances, more subprime borrowing, and even default. Those stresses then have a way of trickling into other aspects of a consumer’s life, and even their community. Read More ›
AB 925 Dies: Secret Recording Of Business-Customer Cell Phone Calls Remains A Crime
Democrats on the Assembly Committee on Public Safety approved AB 925 on a 5-2 party line vote after strenuous opposition from CFC and other consumer, privacy, senior, student, labor and immigrant advocacy groups weakened the bill. Amendments were not yet in print but reportedly would require notification to customers that a call may be recorded 20 seconds into a cell phone conversation, so it remains a bad bill. Read More ›
Payday Loan Rules Proposed by Consumer Protection Agency
by Michael D. Shear and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, The New York Times
Even supporters of the consumer bureau’s mission were critical on Thursday, saying that the proposed payday lending rules do not go far enough. A chorus of consumer groups said that loopholes in the proposal could still leave millions of Americans vulnerable to the expensive loans. … An analysis of 15 million payday loans by the consumer bureau … found that few people who have tapped short-term loans can repay them. Borrowers took out a median of 10 loans during a 12-month span, the bureau said. More than 80 percent of loans were rolled over or renewed within a two-week period. Read More ›
3 Ways To Track Down Your Old Debts
by Gerri Detweiler, Credit.com
When you’re on a mission to clean up your credit, there’s one task that may prove more difficult than you’d think: figuring out who you owe. That’s especially true if some of your debts are old, and have been sold by your creditors to collection agencies. These debts may be bought and sold multiple times, and some even remain in limbo for months or years. Tracking down the owner of a debt so you can pay it sometimes proves challenging. Here are three ways to find your debts so you can resolve them, along with three crucial things you need to understand when you do. Read More ›
Why You Shouldn’t Get a Reverse Mortgage Just Because Fred Thompson Tells You to
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
Reverse mortgages have been found to leave families with debts they can never repay, four-in-five payday loans are made to consumers already caught in the debt trap, and on average 54% of students who attend a for-profit college leave without a degree — with one-in-five of those students defaulting on their loans. … Consumers Union, along with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform provided comments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regarding consumers’ use of reverse mortgages. Read More ›
Online Payday Lenders Are Often ‘Fraudulent and Abusive,’ Study Finds
by Herb Weisbaum, Today
Consumer advocates have long advised against payday loans because of the steep fees and the lump-sum repayment requirement. Pew’s research shows that the average person who takes out one of these two-week loans is actually in debt for five months of the year. This new report makes it clear that the potential for problems is much greater when the transaction takes place online rather than at a store. And if something does go wrong, it’s often a lot harder to deal with it. If you have a problem with an online payday lender, file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Read More ›
The CFPB has only just begun tackling financial services in its first four years
by Ashlee Kieler, Consumerist
Four years ago, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created as a safeguard to ensure the financial industry followed the rules when selling products and services to consumers – and a lot has happened since that time. From returning billions of dollars to consumers who were wrong by financial services to holding for-profit colleges accountable for their deceptions, the work of the CFPB has touched many areas of the financial world and it continues to expand. While the CFPB has provided assistance to millions of consumers in its short time, there is undoubtedly more issues to be addressed. Read More ›
Friendly sales pitch can’t hide payday loans’ unfriendly rates
by David Lazarus, Los Angeles Times
Welcome to the new-and-not-so-improved world of payday lending, which has adopted more sophisticated sales pitches and branding to lure unwary consumers into loans that can trap them in endless cycles of debt. Read More ›