The business press has been hyping a new type of employee benefit: student-loan payments by employers on behalf of their employees. The benefit is so newsworthy that articles have dubbed it “hot” since late 2015. However, only 3 percent of businesses in a survey of 450 offer to help pay for their employees’ student debts, …
Going by a Bloomberg article, the City of Detroit has not learned about debt collectors that are adopting new technologies to target borrowers. Like cities in New York State, Michigan authorizes its municipalities to collect income taxes from its residents. Detroit concluded its chapter 9 bankruptcy in late 2014, and in the meantime nearly half …
Detroit Learns That Threatening Letters to Tax Debtors Gets Results Read More »
Before the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (ACA), which Congress passed in 2010, medical bankruptcy was alarmingly common. Because many Americans could not afford health insurance, if they suffered an injury or were diagnosed with a serious illness, then they could face very large, unpayable bills. It doesn’t help that the U.S. has one of …
How Much Did the ACA Reduce Medical Bankruptcies? Read More »
Too often, debtors see grace periods offered by lenders as free benefits. “Grace” makes it sound so innocent. However, debtors who routinely rely on grace periods when making payments will find themselves facing financial difficulties that might lead to bankruptcy. The reason is that although creditors offer grace periods to debtors, they also use them …
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued a press briefing along with the update to its Household Debt and Quarterly Credit Report. It highlighted new research into the relationship between student loans and homeownership. At the same time, the update provides some insight into topics relating to New York bankruptcy. Beginning with the good …
NY Fed: More Student Loans Lead to Lower Homeownership Rates Read More »
Can unpayable debts kill debtors? If so, how does debt stack up against other causes of death in America? It’s a pressing question because the more debt affects mortality, the more bankruptcy is a medicine for debt-related health problems. Economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta addressed the question in a November 2016 working …
It’s an unfortunate fact of Chapter 13 that it does not allow debtors to cram down their mortgages to the market value of their properties the way they can auto loans. Specifically, debtors can’t cram down their principal homes’ mortgages, but cram-downs are possible for investment properties. One question that’s been popping up recently in …
New York Bankruptcy Court Prohibits Lien-Stripping of Debtor’s Duplex Read More »
Observing the tenth anniversary of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, I discussed one of its less consequential impacts on New York bankruptcy: whether debtor-education requirements were a waste of time. The Government Accountability Office found that debtors thought the courses were somewhat helpful, but they would not have prevented their bankruptcies. In …
CFPB Studies Debtor Education That Isn’t a Waste of Debtors’ Time Read More »
At about the same time the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discussed a study about how debtors prioritize debts when money is tight, another Federal Reserve branch, in Boston, published a paper asking whether unemployment leads to increased credit-card use. The short answer is a surprising no. It turns out that rather than run …
Study: People Stay Away From Credit Cards When Unemployed Read More »
Late last year, I wrote about the importance of using secure passwords to protect personal information in the context of the hacking that affected the 2016 election. Reinforcing and expanding on some of the points in that post, the Pew Research Center produced a sizeable report titled, “Americans and Cybersecurity,” which adds some insights. Generally, …
Pew Research Center: Americans Don’t Secure Their Devices, Get Hacked Read More »
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