The credit score system is one of the most obvious ways in which the rich get richer.  The more money you have, the more money you can borrow, but if you are not wealthy and you really need to borrow money, it is hard to find anyone to lend it to you.  The amounts you can borrow are much less, and borrowing is much more expensive in terms of interest and fees.  Raising your credit score is a slow process, but unless you have enough money to pay in full when buying a car or a house, it is the only way that you can afford major purchases.  Credit utilization is one of the fac ..read more

Few Americans enjoy math enough to choose to take more math classes than required to graduate.  Ask a group of pre-med majors what they like and dislike about their field of study, and thy will tell you about their desire to heal the sick and their ambitions for well-paying jobs in the medical profession, but they will also admit that all the math classes and math-intensive science classes that pre-med majors have to take are tough.  Anyone who made it through elementary school understands the concepts of greater than and less than, though.  You can look at your bank account bal ..read more

Being told that you need to make a budget and stick to it is as pleasant as being told that you need to go on a diet.  You are already spending your every free moment engaged in one or more income generating activities, and you spend as modestly as you can, but everything is so expensive.  The idea of allocating every penny before your paycheck even comes in sounds downright depressing.  You prefer to pay the bills that are due and then take your budget one day at a time.  Even though such a strategy would cause many a personal finance expert to suffer any a conniption fit ..read more

Yes, Grandpa, everyone knows that a McDonald’s hamburger used to cost a nickel when you were a child, but the price increases of the past few years are not your usual garden variety inflation creep.  Even if you are so young that you have not yet needed to renew your driver’s license, you can remember a time when no one paid more than $40,000 for a new car unless they were trying to show off a little bit.  Today, you can’t even find a used car for less than $40,000 unless you are buying it on Craigslist from someone whose email address gives no indication of their legal name.  T ..read more

The feeling that you are in control of your situation is as empowering as it is illusory.  By the time you are old enough to live paycheck to paycheck, you know that many of the factors that influence your financial situation are beyond your control.  Your medical debt exists because healthcare is unfairly expensive; voters have an impact on healthcare policy, but yours is only one vote among millions.  Market forces that determine the prices of the things you cannot avoid buying are far too complex for you to change them simply by changing your habits.  Despite this, under ..read more

If there is a bright side to the insufficient pay that most of us get for our hard work, it is that we at least get a tax refund once a year.  The working people of the United States spend every day subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich who have access to expense accounts and shell corporations, and on one day every year, a check arrives in the mail, or a deposit arrives in our bank accounts, as acknowledgement for our hard work.  Unfortunately, tax refunds are not enough to reduce wealth inequality in any meaningful way.  This does not mean that you should spend your tax refun ..read more

The economic conditions of everyday life in South Florida have never been worse, at least not for as long as today’s working adults can remember.  The price of some groceries has decreased since its peak, but overall, grocery receipts are still as painful to look at as they were during the worst days of the pandemic.  Paying for groceries and other necessities wit buy now pay later (BNPL) has become so common that people have added a BNPL minimum payments treadmill to their list of financial woes; those who are lucky enough to also have a credit card are stuck on both the credit card ..read more

Dissolving a company because it has become insolvent or because it has failed to become profitable is a frequent occurrence in the world of entrepreneurship, but that does not mean that it is inexpensive or painless.  Filing for bankruptcy protection is an option; all companies and individuals have the right to recourse to the federal bankruptcy courts if they cannot pay their debts and need protection from creditors.  When possible, though, it is easier to settle your debts without going through a formal bankruptcy proceeding in court.  Bankruptcy alternatives such as assignmen ..read more

One of the unpleasant truths about personal finance is that the rich get richer every time they borrow money and every time they make an installment payment toward repaying it, while the rest of us diligently pay our bills every month, usually exhausting our entire paycheck in the process, while our credit score barely inches upward.  In a perfect world, paying your rent every month would boost your credit score just as much as making payments on a home mortgage loan does, but the credit reporting bureaus do not see it that way.  The fact that rent payments usually do not count towar ..read more

If you have ever taken out a payday loan in person, you would choose almost any other way of borrowing money, if it were available to you.  Anything is better than taking a long bus ride when you are exhausted after work and then walking to a poorly lit strip mall with bright neon signs, only to hand over your entire paycheck and be just as broke as you were this time last pay period.  The new generation of financial products that serve the most vulnerable borrowers are just as bad; the only difference is that you can access them on your smartphone from the comfort of your apartment ..read more