Category Archives: Bad credit

Credit card limit lowered, credit score goes down

June 26, 2011   admin   No comments

If you have several credit cards and carry balances on more than one, it is important to stay proactive and pay attention to each card limit. Lowered credit limit on a card with balance increases the credit utilization rate and often makes credit score go down. If two or three issuers have your credit card limits lowered, the scores will likely go down quite significantly.

Who is the most vulnerable to such a scenario? Credit card holders who transfer balances at 0% percent interest on two or three cards and set up monthly automatic payments. And with banks lowering credit card limits, it is easy to suddenly discover your utilization rate is too high and credit score went down 50 or more points.

Check credit card limit often
Every time you login into the account, look at it carefully.

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  Tags: Card Limit, Credit, Lowered Credit

Gold price will rise in 2011

June 22, 2011   admin   No comments

The chart looks good and so are underlying reasons that will help gold price rise further. The main drive is the world wide growing demand for gold as an alternative to the paper currencies. According to the World Gold Council recently released quarterly Gold Demand Trends report, the strength of the global gold market is incredible. During the first quarter of 2011, gold demand grew 11% to just over 981 tons, which amounted to $43.7 billion US dollars at end-of-the-quarter prices.

Investors, looking to protect their assets from growing inflation, fueled the rise in gold volume and price, as it was up 26% from a year ago.

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  Tags: Gold Price, Gold Price Rise, Price Rise, Rise

Pain of student loans

May 11, 2011   admin   No comments

It does hurt. On average, 2011 graduates carry almost $23,000 in student loans each, the highest debt load ever, according to the Wall Street Journal. I would call this a giant debt avalanche. According to various sources, total amount of student debt is somewhere between $850 billions and $1 trillion. For the first time it has overtaken the total balance of credit card debt, and almost 40% of students are in default. And these loans are yours till death does you apart, with practically no way out. The outrageous tuition, higher interest rates and lack of employment because of ongoing recession are the three obvious reasons.

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  Tags: Loans, Student Loans

Chinese yuan, Walmart, home prices and economy

May 05, 2011   admin   No comments

As I mentioned in December 2010 in Economy is improving? I don’t think so, any economy two-thirds of which based on consumer spending has problems and big ones. And the US consumers will buy much less now as Chinese-made goods will get more expensive and gas prices are about to reach $5 per gallon. Both charts clearly show the Chinese yuan rising drastically in value against the US dollar in the last two to three weeks. The price of everything made in China will be going higher. And Walmart which caters to a huge number of US consumers and sells more of Chinese made goods than other retailers, seeing the problem.

CEO of Walmart, Mike Duke noticed something rather unsettling – Walmart shoppers, most of whom live quite literally paycheck to paycheck and shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when the paychecks come in, frequent the stores less and buying less.

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  Tags: Economy

Short sale and tax consequences

May 01, 2011   admin   No comments

Q: Do I have to pay tax after a short sale? I am selling my house short and the neighbor told me that the IRS requires lenders issue form 1099C for all debt that was forgiven. In my case, it is almost $70,000 and paying taxes on that much will be impossible.

A: Is this short sale on your primary residence? If yes, you should be fine, because The Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007 does not consider forgiven debt on your principal residence as a taxable income for either short sale or foreclosure. It also applies for debt reduced through mortgage restructuring. This provision is valid for up to $2 million in debt for a married couple, forgiven from 2007 through 2012.

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  Tags: Short Sale, Tax

Time to establish credit history

April 25, 2011   admin   No comments

You can find plenty of advise and instruction, some good and some not so, on how to establish credit. The other question that a lot people ask these days is what time is needed to establish credit history to be able to get loans. Interest rates have been low for a long time and seemingly everyone expects them to go higher. Home prices have been going lower every day and just as well, everyone thinks that they are bottoming and will bounce back. So every new college grad with a job or a fresh of the boat immigrant is in a hurry to establish credit history, get the credit score and score that house.

For the record, I think that interest rate will stay low for quite a while, while home prices will be going down, albeit slower.

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  Tags: Credit, Establish Credit
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