How to hire a financial advisor

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Hiring a financial advisor may be necessary to you if you need help with personal finance issues. After all, money is very important in our lives, and one small mistake in decision making can lead to a huge financial crisis. A financial advisor is there to help you with managing retirement accounts, investing funds, and achieving financial goals you may have, such as buying a home.

The process of hiring a good financial advisor may be tricky though. You will be placing your best interests in the hands of your financial advisor, so you will need to be sure that the person you hire has integrity and good character. But first, do you really need to hire one? Getting outside help can still be confusing if you don’t understand what you are getting yourself into. Read full post…

New Mexico Debt Collection Rule Is a Victory for Debtors

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New Mexico’s Attorney General will begin enforcing a new Rule which requires debt collectors doing business in New Mexico to make a good faith effort to determine if collection of a debt is time-barred and if it is time-barred, to so inform the debtor. The collector must also tell the debtor that signing a new agreement to pay the debt, or making a partial payment might “revive” the debt, resetting the time period that the collector has to sue on the debt.

The Attorney General implemented the rule in order to end “an industry-wide [debt collection] practice that tends to or does mislead or deceive” consumers by failing to provide important information to consumers – that is, that a debt is so old that it is legally unenforceable in court.

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Attention U.S. Government: It is Time to Act

Posted by Alana Renard | No Comments

The current economic situation within our country and the prolonged foreclosure crisis is becoming entirely too much for many people to handle. Recently, information was released that indicated that the Feds provided banks with $7.7 trillion in bailout money that was kept secret from American taxpayers. This information has made struggling homeowners and those who lost their homes in the foreclosure crisis completely livid. Banks act unethically and are saved by the government while working class Americans are suffering daily.

Approximately 1 out of 5 mortgages in the country are underwater as a result of the falling home prices due to the high foreclosure inventory.

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Year End Planning for Massachusetts Clients

Posted by Levi Templeton | No Comments

As we enter the final weeks of the calendar year we post this blog article to inform Massachusetts consumers of a few things they can do to reduce taxes and keep their retirements accounts active. Our Massachusetts Financial Planning for 2011 blog article in our http://www.bostonbankruptcylawyerblog.com/ blog should be revisited.

Tax planning basically involves two things: deferring income and reducing taxable income. Deferring income may seem counter intuitive, but it can reduce your taxable income this year.

Defer income to 2012 if you can; any year-end bonus that you are entitled to could be requested or given in January. Thus, you will not be required to pay the tax until 2012.

Pay deductibles in 2011; these could include medical bills, interest payments, state and local taxes, including property taxes.

Tax rates are set to remain the same for 2012; there are six tax rates, 10%, 14%, 25%, 28% and 35%.

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Impact of credit score on interest rate of bank loans

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Credit score is essentially a statistical analysis of your credit files and is numerically expressed, though it might also have alphabet designations. A credit score measures your credit worthiness which invariably is a measure of your capability to repay a loan taken out against you. This is a measure taken by most banks or lenders to assess the risk factor involved with lending out to any individual or organization.

It automatically follows from this that the credit rating is very important in deciding the interest rate that you pay for your bank loan. Most banks like to avoid what they consider as bad debt and hence for those who have bad credit score, a higher interest rate is levied upon so as to be able to recover the most from the initial payments itself even in the case when the person with poor credit rating defaults. Read full post…

Risky Mortgages Lead to Credit Nightmares

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A new report by credit bureau TransUnion shows an increase in the number of people falling behind on their mortgages over the last quarter. The delinquency rate of borrowers going 60 days or more past due on mortgage payments increased to 5.88 percent in Q3 of 2011. This is the first increase since 2009. TransUnion blames the higher number of missed payments on a number of third quarter factors, including the U.S. credit rating downgrade, high unemployment rates, stock price declines, and low home values. More missed mortgage payments lead to a higher number of bad credit scores.

Fortunately, more and more consumers are beginning to understand the risks that debt can have on credit scores. TransUnion’s proprietary Credit Risk Index declined for the seventh consecutive quarter. T

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How Financial Planner Websites Can Benefit You

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If given a choice between having to dress up properly and getting ready to meet up with a financial expert as opposed to having the convenience of getting your questions answered just the same, except that you can now do it in the comfort of your own living room, dressed in your t-shirt and shorts. Which would you rather have? Many people today would most likely opt for the latter as people somehow prefer the convenience of fast communication over the Internet, over the traditional method of having to meet a person face-to-face in order to get your queries answered. Read full post…

IRS Seizes Assets of Professor

Posted by Alana Renard | No Comments

A professor working in Amarillo College had her car, a 2010 Nissan Altima, and $17,238.77 seized by the IRS. IRS agents claim Professor Theresa D’Costa Jiwa, 56, deposited $370,000 into her bank account between August 2009 and June 2010. A federal search warrant affidavit disclosed that Jiwa subsequently transferred most of the money into another bank account she used for property transactions. The money was then used for house renovations on her Canyon residence and to buy several other properties in Randall County.

Professor Jiwa, who works in Amarillo College as an English professor, draws a salary of $58,000 per annum as at last year. S

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“Sorry, Wrong Number”

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A new amendment could give bankruptcy judges the power to adjust mortgages on principal residences in addition to vacation homes and investment properties.  In the simplest terms, homeowners could use bankruptcy to reduce their monthly mortgage payments, either the principal amount or their interest rate—even extend the repayment period of a mortgage.   

The first incarnation of this bill flopped, having gone through the House with flying colors but failed to bulldoze through the Senate this past March 2009.  At the time, it was supported by Democrats and President Obama to reestablish bankruptcy as a “last resort measure”, otherwise concerned that the epic foreclosure rates could lead to bankruptcies where the root mortgage problems were never successfully alleviated. 

The mortgage cram-down bill is actively criticized for having unpredictable effects.  The banking industry fiercely lobbies against it, rationalizing that the abundant investing in mortgages by outside parties could create an investment free for all. 

Democrats avidly counter that the unpredictable effects of a cram-down cannot be much worse than having massive, widespread defaults across the country.  After all, a staggering 2.6 trillion dollars of home values were lost during the sub-prime mortgage fallout where hundreds of thousands of people defaulted on unaffordable interest rates. 

Individuals who file for bankruptcy due to a threatened foreclosure are almost directly affected by these measures.  After all, bankruptcy is still the number one way to combat an impending foreclosure, but its effects don’t last forever; the mortgage is still due every month.   

If you’d like to learn more about how mortgage cram down measures in bankruptcy could keep you from losing your home now or several years after your bankruptcy, call the qualified attorneys at Legal Helpers!  We answer all bankruptcy information queries and provide free initial consultations.  For answers from a legal professional, please call 1-800-260-1402.

Debt Re-Aging and Your Credit Score

Posted by Levi Templeton | No Comments

Depending on your situation, debt re-aging can help or hinder your credit scores. While one represents an act of fair business practices, the other represents business at its worse. Read on to discover the particulars about debt re-aging and how it could affect you.

Consumer Request Re-aging

The first type of debt re-aging is a welcome relief for struggling consumers. Some lenders are willing to re-age debt as an act of goodwill for loyal customers. In the wake of an economic depression, many people have become first-time members of the late payment club. If you are among this group, you may be able to fix your credit via re-aging. After finding your financial stability, ask your lender to reset your account to “current,” thereby deleting any past transgressions. Man

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