January 14, 2016

Have you experienced a marked decrease in your credit card bills since 2011? If yes, you are not alone. From 2011 to 2014, credit card holders have seen a reduction in credit card related fees to the tune of nearly $20 billion! This phenomenon didn’t really happen on its own. It is an effect of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, better known as the Cred...

January 11, 2016

Despite warmer than normal temperatures across much of the nation, contracts to purchase previously owned homes fell in November, signifying that growth in the U.S. housing market could be cooling down. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts (not closings), decreased by 0.9% to a reading of 106.9 in November – compared to an...

January 8, 2016

Existing home sales sank considerably in November to the lowest pace in 19 months, but some of the decrease was due to delayed closings and disruption from a new lending disclosure rule. Last week, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) announced that existing home sales fell 10.5% month-over-month in November to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.76 million. This figure was well below...

January 4, 2016

The good news about getting endless email solicitations from credit card companies is that these companies target customers who have good or excellent credit – and that means you! The bad news is… that you get all this junk mail. If you are an environmentalist like me, you might find it especially galling that all these tree slices are going right into the trash… or, hopefully,...

December 31, 2015

Holiday shopping just got a little more interesting. A bitcoin wallet, known as Coinbase, has teamed up with VISA to offer the first ever bitcoin debit card in the US. Consumers can now do their holiday shopping directly with bitcoin, instead of converting it first into fiat currency over a bitcoin exchange – or searching for outlets and websites that accept the digital currency. For those ...

December 28, 2015

Last week, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time in almost a decade. The Federal Open Market Committee unanimously voted to set the new target range for the federal funds rate at 0.25 percent to 0.5 percent. Policy makers separately forecast an appropriate rate of 1.375 percent at the end of 2016. This implies four quarter-point increases in the target range next year. This ...