You may have seen us on the Today Show this morning, braving some chilly weather to promote Financial Literacy Month. We gave Matt Lauer an Econ4U t-shirt, which we fully expect him to wear on the air tomorrow.
So whether it’s staying home from work, refusing to ride on mass transit, or avoiding retail spaces like restaurants and malls, a flu scare could have a devastating economic impact even if there don’t turn out to be very many deaths from swine flu in America.
A new study from Sallie Mae, the largest provider of student loans in the U.S., found that 30% of American students put at least some of their tuition payments onto personal credit cards. That’s an increase of six percentage points since 2004. Perhaps equally troubling, the study found that only 18% of students are able [...]
When newspaper headlines focus on the mortgage crisis and foreclosure rates, crooks’ ears tend to perk up. And that means more and more people are getting sucked into mortgage scams. Because government foreclosure documents are public record, many homeowners are receiving personalized letters filled with false promises of hope. The people who fall for these [...]
April 23, 2009 – 12:11 pm
For those who have debt, paying off credit card balances, repaying college loans, and trying to figure out the best strategy for the mortgage can seem like a pretty tall order. As we have reminded you here at Econ4U, getting out of debt is completely achievable, so long as you have a plan and educate [...]
In case you missed them, here are some of our most popular recent posts. How Tax Rates Differ in the D.C. Metro Area Video: Do People Know How Big 1 Trillion Really Is? Should Congress Be Limiting Short-Term Loan Options? Can a Good Credit Score Help You Score? Welcome to Your Quarter-Life Crisis The Economic [...]
You know those “Important Notices” you get in the mail from your bank and credit card companies? The ones filled with 25 pages of indecipherable fine print? Well, it turns out that sometimes there’s actually important information mixed in with all the legalese. At least if you want to avoid paying $119.40 in annual fees. [...]
Personal finance and economic literacy experts usually focus on the issues facing college students, adults with families, and those facing retirement. But what about those single twenty-somethings who seem to dominate Washington, D.C. and other major cities? Welcome to your quarter-life crisis. This article by Kate Carraway looks into the problems facing urban, middle class twenty- and thirty- year-olds trying to [...]
The editor over at Kiplinger Magazine, Janet Bodnar, has a great column this week about keeping it simple when discussing personal finance with kids. And it doesn’t hurt that she used data from Econ4U’s most recent survey to make her point! No matter how little you think you know about money, you still know more [...]
The Sunday New York Times had a good story about the 2,000+ debt settlement companies in the United States and some of the controversy surrounding them. Debt settlement firms market themselves as a solution for people with crippling credit card debt. The idea is that you pay the settlement firm to negotiate with the credit [...]
