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

Getting out of debt is a marathon, not a sprint.  The only way to pay off your debts all at once is to receive a windfall such as a lottery win or an inheritance, or else to take out a debt consolidation loan.  The first only happens if you are extraordinarily lucky, and only then, after you spend a lot of money on lottery tickets, or if someone close to you dies, and the second option means that you pay off your old debt but immediately get a new debt that you must pay off.  It is also possible to discharge some of your debts in bankruptcy, but most people do not choose that op ..read more

Being broke is lonely, but it doesn’t have to be.  Most of us are living paycheck to paycheck, but hardly anyone talks about it.  Somehow, it is more socially acceptable to talk about the big splurges that you wish you could afford than about the instant ramen noodles that await you after the long bus ride home from work.  It doesn’t have to be that way, though.  Every generation declutters the etiquette rules of the previous ones, keeping only the ones that are still useful.  Spending beyond your means to convince other people that you have more money than you do help ..read more

Some people start thinking about building generational wealth when their children are born or when they start to think seriously about having children.  They stress about providing a financial cushion so that their children can have an easier time getting established financially as adults and, simply, to grow up in an environment where financial catastrophe does not lurk around every corner.  Of course, for people in their early 20s, the future seems as distant as it does uncertain.  It is easy for journalists to say that young people only care about posting heavily filtered pic ..read more

No one really looks forward to Tax Day.  It is with Schadenfreude that we watch judges threaten celebrities with jail time after the celebrities fail to fulfill their millions of dollars of tax obligations.  Being one of the lucky few who get a tax refund is a double-edged sword.  It means that you are an employee at a job where you don’t earn enough to make ends meet, and you have so little free time, that instead of working gigs to break even, you get a tax refund, which, like other people’s gigs, is not enough to cover the difference between your income and breaking even.&nbs ..read more

When people set the intention to improve their credit scores, the goal is usually to qualify for a loan that is currently out of their reach.  Home mortgage loans are the grand prize.  Owning a house gives you financial stability and generational wealth in ways that other things you can buy on credit do not.  A house is an income-generating asset in ways in which vehicles are not, even if you use the vehicles for business purposes.  Home ownership is unaffordable for most people, but your credit score is not the only factor that determines whether you can qualify for a home ..read more

If you are living paycheck to paycheck on a household income of more than $100,000, you are in a better financial position than many.  It certainly beats having a lower household income and not even being able to keep up with your bills.  The reason that so many gainfully employed people find their entire paychecks going to bills and minimum payments on debts is partly for society-wide factors such as mind-bogglingly expensive healthcare and unaffordable prices on necessities like groceries and gasoline.  No debt relief lawyer will ever blame you for getting into debt, because e ..read more

Court decisions issued over the past 15 years are full of evidence of the ways in which social media has destroyed interpersonal relationships and the reputations of individuals and companies.  If a time traveler read court decisions that reference social media activity, though, it would also be obvious to him or her that social media is big business.  From local beef patty trucks to multinational corporations, everyone advertises on social media.  Legal disputes over social media are not just about defamation, breaches of confidentiality, and freedom of speech, although there a ..read more

Yes, it is possible to get a mortgage when your credit score is lower than 670.  Some lenders will even consider your application if your credit score is as low as 620.  Your options will be limited as far as the amount you can borrow, though.  With less-than-optimal credit scores, the interest rates on a home mortgage will also be higher.  Therefore, unless you can put together a bigger down payment, thereby reducing the total amount that you will need to borrow, then you might want to look into lower cost alternatives to conventional mortgages.  Because these mortgag ..read more