Category Archives: Debt
Consumer Debt Is Manageable, but By Whose Standards?
In May 2026, Ted Rossman of Yahoo Finance wrote that, in the second quarter of 2026, consumer debt is still manageable. While the author deserves credit for not catastrophizing, and the website deserves credit for a headline that qualifies as benign clickbait, the article’s premise, namely that American consumers’ financial situation is not so… Read More »
The Downsides of Debt Settlement
Deciding to settle your debt directly with a creditor is an easy choice if your other option is filing for bankruptcy protection. A bankruptcy case is a legal dispute where you are a litigant; you only get the financial relief that the court awards you, and you must pay the filing fee without knowing… Read More »
Confronting the Financial Fallout of an Unanticipated Retirement
You can usually avoid the mantra, “You have a limited number of hours of your life to trade for dollars” by refraining from clicking on passive income bro content, but the thought that you will eventually be too old and sick to continuing chasing paychecks is disconcerting if the only way you will be… Read More »
Now Used Cars Are Unaffordable, Too
Seven-year car loans are nothing new. It is a seller’s market for new cars, and it has been since the days of the COVID lockdowns. The average sticker price for a new car in 2025 was $49,000, and most consumers paid the sticker price, because the demand for new cars exceeded the supply. Buying… Read More »
The Multigenerational Financial Crisis
In the 1990s, newspaper columnists used to knit their brows about the popularity of trash TV. Everyone from retirees to teens home for summer vacation to the unemployable would sit at home and watch daytime talk shows where people complained about their sordid problems, from co-parenting conflicts to disputes over children’s paternity, and they… Read More »
Beyond the 30 Percent Rule for Housing
Handy numerical benchmarks can help us get our bearings, but financial decisions are more individual than our favorite personal finance proverbs would have us believe. Yes, if you want to save for retirement, you should put five percent of your income into savings every month. Thanks, Uncle Moneybags, but I don’t make enough money… Read More »
Seven-Year Auto Loans Are Here to Stay
Car loans with a repayment term of seven years have become the new normal. Ten years ago, five years was the standard term of a car loan. Seven-year loans existed, but they were only for the foolhardiest or the most financially desperate people. The pandemic changed everything, when shortages drove up prices, so no… Read More »
Never Trust an AI Financial Adviser
Before we started applying it to the machines that do most of the heavy lifting in office work, the term “computer” referred to people who performed mathematical calculations. For example, the protagonists of the movie Hidden Figures worked as computers; their work consisted of solving mathematical equations to corroborate the answers that their coworkers… Read More »
Here Come the Subprime Debt Consolidation Loans
Debt consolidation is nothing new. People have been borrowing from Peter to pay Paul for as long as societies have been complex enough that intricate networks of indebtedness could arise. Consolidating your debt sounds like a brilliant solution to a stubborn problem, but it is really just a nice way of saying borrowing money… Read More »
About Those Overpriced Credit Checks
We are all familiar with the ways that people who rely on employment income get nickel and dimed in virtually every aspect of life. It is almost impossible to open a bank account if you have never had one; until you can produce a dozen different documents attesting to your financial stability, you are… Read More »