Headline News Archive

2011

September

13

• College graduates driving increase in bankruptcy. College graduates are the fastest-growing group of consumers who have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past five years, according to a new study by…

08

• Social Security pays millions to dead people. While many Americans worry that the Social Security Administration won't have enough money left to pay their benefits when they retire, the agency is doling…

• Healthcare costs rose while insurance coverage fell. U.S. workers whose wages stagnated over the last decade also saw their health insurance degrade, even as medical costs gobbled up a growing share of…

06

• Consumer protection nominee promises cooperation. President Barack Obama's nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is promising to be accountable to Congress and is playing down the lawsuits…

• Insurers' rate quote practice unfair. Let's say your barber is increasing the cost of haircuts. Is it fair for other barbers to require that you disclose how much you were…

02

• Putting a price on prolonging a doomed life. Bob Iritano died Thursday morning. He was 51. Iritano wasn't a celebrity. He wasn't a captain of industry or a mover and shaker. Iritano was…

01

• Reverse mortgages: Do the benefits outweigh the risks?. The reverse mortgage was invented decades ago to help seniors facing economic hardship access the equity in their homes. Between 1990 and 2010, more than…

• Tougher rules for credit bureaus could be on the way. Borrowers may soon have more weapons to fight back against erroneous credit reports and credit scores. This includes uncovering discrepancies when a report or score…

• Rebuilding after Irene? Watch for contractor scams. Homeowners who found themselves in the sights of Hurricane Irene may soon be targeted by scammers looking to profit from their pain. As attention turns…

August

31

• What’s worse for credit score — foreclosure, short sale, deed in lieu?. You can’t really say that credit scores don’t matter. They do. People can just let the home go to foreclosure, and this will affect their…

30

• After Irene, what will insurance cover?. Thousands of East Coast residents whose homes were damaged by Hurricane Irene could find themselves stuck with bills that aren't covered by their homeowners insurance…

26

• Hurricane Irene could wreak havoc on insurance premiums. East Coast homeowners in the path of Hurricane Irene could be on the hook for thousands of dollars in damages that aren't covered by their…

• Is travel insurance a smart bet for your vacation?. Hurricane Irene's swath through the Caribbean this week probably left many of the no-longer paradise-bound wondering: Should I have taken out travel insurance? Gabe Saglie,…

25

• U.S. may back mortgage refinance plan. The Obama administration is considering further actions to strengthen the housing market, but the bar is high: plans must help a broad swath of homeowners,…

23

• Foreclosure talks stall. An effort by state attorneys general to take big mortgage servicers to task over faulty foreclosure practices has stalled as financial institutions demand broad legal…

19

• Medical debt cited more often in bankruptcies. Medical debt is increasingly a factor in personal bankruptcy filings, an analysis of data at a large credit-counseling agency finds. Roughly 20 percent of those…

18

• New rules would let consumers compare health insurance plans. What would your health insurance cover if you got pregnant? How much could you expect to pay out of pocket if you needed treatment for…

16

• Inflated medical bills mask true cost. It's bad enough that her son has a chronic disease that can send him to the emergency room when the pain becomes unbearable. But Susan…

• Proposal to keep government's big role with mortgage rates. President Obama has directed a small team of advisers to develop a proposal that would keep the government playing a major role in the nation’s…

15

• Taking on Medicare and Medicaid. Editor’s note: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) released a plan in July that he said would achieve $9 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade.…

09

• Stock market's silver lining for consumers. The stock market sell-off over the past week has created a surprising — albeit likely short-term — silver lining for consumers: ultra-low interest rates. The…

05

• Cost of Medicare's Part D drug plan is dropping. Even as health costs continue to rise, Medicare beneficiaries will see the average price of a Part D drug plan decline slightly next year, the…

04

• Loss of home equity downsizes retirement for many. Paul Trigili, an information technology professional in Las Vegas, is 65, has back problems and would like to retire at the end of the year.…

• Burden of long-term care needs strain families. America is facing a crisis that will make the federal budget deficit look like a simple bank overdraft fee. If we don’t figure out how…

03

• Debt ceiling deal ignores real driver of deficits: healthcare costs. Now that Congress is finished displaying its one unquestionable skill — conniving at ideological extortion, with the household budgets of millions of Americans hanging in…