All About Credit Score

If you’re struggling under what feels like a debt mountain, you’re probably ready to consider a variety of options to ease or eliminate your financial burden. And, if you don’t think bankruptcy is right for you (or if you’re ineligible for bankruptcy because of a recent filing), you may be wondering whether debt settlement could help.

While debt settlement does work for some people, it can be risky to sign on with a debt settlement firm – less-than-scrupulous companies abound and can cheat consumers out of money when they can least afford to lose it.

When Can You Trust a Debt Settlement Firm?

A recent article from WalletPop.com offers some tips for spotting a trustworthy debt settlement company. Here’s a

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Tags: Debt, Debt Settlement

Credit card and loan companies use a standard to determine who will be their possible clients. It is risky for these companies to let all people borrow unlimited money from them because each person differs in terms of his capacity and capability to pay the kind of loan they apply for.

Lenders will use the person’s credit score to determine the total amount that the person can borrow. It is also useful in recommending how much the company will charge based on the cost of borrowing the money—the interest rates.

Credit score has been a product of the Fair Isaac Company’s goal which is to achieve an over-all and general score for the individual with regard to his basic credit report and history.

The credit score involves several variables including the person’s loan account and records in different companies, mortgages, type of credit card accounts, delayed or missed payments over time.

Moreover, credit scores have its own range based on Fair Isaac. The ran

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Tags: Computing Credit, Credit

You might want to consider chapter 13 bankruptcy…

Very often I will sit down with a new consult and one of the first things they say is “I want this to be a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, I don’t want Chapter 13.”  I always then ask “Why do you say that?” because the answer gives me insight into what they have already learned (either through reading or talking to someone else, which is often wrong) and what kind of result they are looking for.  Very often these same folks end up being excited about the idea of going through a Chapter 13 bankruptcy.  Here’s why:

Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a wonderful tool that creates results in certain circumstances that we cannot make happen in Chapter 7 such as:  Catching up mortgage arrearages over time and avoiding foreclosure, stripping second and third mortgages from a primary residence, managing nondischargeable IRS or other debt that we cannot get rid of in Chapter 7 (like alimony/child support arrearages or some fraud judgments) and cramming down secured debt on some vehicles (along with the interest rate on the debt).  If a debtor has consistent income, but it doesn’t seem to be enough to go everywhere they need it to, then Chapter 13 may very well be the answer.  This is how it works:

Repayment Plan Created

In Chapter 13, the debtor creates a Plan that will be followed for three to five years.  As long as the Pla

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Tags: Chapter, Chapter 13

Recently, in In re Brubaker[1] a Florida bankruptcy court held that funds related to checks that had not cleared were property of the estate under section 541(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code.[2] In Brubaker, the debtors wrote several checks before filing for chapter 7 relief.[3] As of the filing date, these checks had not cleared, and therefore the funds remained in the debtors’ bank account.[4] The bankruptcy court rejected the debtors’ argument that these funds transferred on the dates that the checks were presented to the recipient, and thus were not property of the estate. Instead, the court noted that funds do not transfer until the checks are honored. Thus, the court held that funds remaining in the account were property of the estate since the debtors’ bank had not honored the checks.

Under section 542(a) all property in “possession, custody, or control” of the debtor at the start of the case must be delivered to the trustee.[5] The court looked at the UCC for guidance in determining “control” under section 542(a).[6] Under the UCC, a check is simply an order for the bank to pay the recipient a stated sum of money on demand.[7] Until the bank issues payment, the debtor has the ability to close the account or stop payment of the check.[8] Since the checks in Brubaker had not been cashed at the time of filing, the funds were in debtors’ control and remained part of the estate.[9] In Barnhill v. Johnson (In re Barnhill)<

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Tags: Estate, Prepetition Property

Enough is enough…

On a recent flight from New York to South Carolina, I stumbled across an excerpt in the U.S. Airways Magazine from a soon to be released book titled The Tyranny of Email by journalist John Freeman. As someone who currently has over 18,000 emails in their inbox, the few pages I read really resonated with me. Freeman points out that information overload is a $650 billion dollar drag on the U.S. economy and that the “convenience” of email is often outweighed by the tremendous amount of time we spend, well ……..emailing. Will we see a day when the truly weary, pasty and pale among us will be able to declare email bankruptcy? When th

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Tags: Email, Email Bankruptcy