A major survey released by the think tank Demos provides some important new insights on how average American families are using credit cards.
The implication is hard to escape: many middle- and low-income American families are using consumer credit as a way to weather fluctuations in their finances.
Americans owe $800 billion in credit card debt, more than triple the amount from 1989, and a 31 percent increase from five years ago, according to a recent report, "The Plastic Safety Net," by the Center for Responsible Lending, and Demos, a research group based in New York.
The study found that a third of low- and middle-income American households used credit cards for basic expenses - rent, groceries and utilities - in any 4 of the last 12 months.
Those with the worst credit card debt were people ages 50 to 64, who owed $9,124
A fraudulent appraisal "can lead homeowners to borrow more money than their homes are worth, putting themselves at risk of being 'upside down' in a home -- e.g. not being able to sell for a high enough price to pay off their mortgage," according to a briefing paper on appraisal fraud put out by Demos, a New York-based think tank.
According to the advocacy group Demos, the average balance among lower- and middle-income households is $8,650.
"World News Tonight's" special series "Credit Crunch" aims to help you get on the road to becoming debt free.
Draut argues that "with the possible exception of having a larger array of entertainment and other goods to purchase, members of Generation X appear to be worse off by every measure" than prior generations.
Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell University, for instance, found that in counties with the widest income gaps, rates of personal bankruptcy and divorce rates were higher than average.
Today's 20-somethings are likely to be the first generation to not be better off than their parents." This is the first line of Economic State of Young America, a report released by Demos, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in New York City. And that's a troubling thesis for a generation that grew up being told they can do and be anything.
With another stroke of his pen, President Obama can authorize an Executive Order mandating paid sick leave for the same federally contracted workers whom he just gave a raise to.
In the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, this amendment is a necessary counterbalance to the deluge of money that wealthy individuals, corporations and special interests have flooded into our elections.
Embedded gender and racial discrimination and lack of bargaining power are major causes of not only low pay for home health care aides but for many of the country’s low-wage, fast-growing occupations.
Workers at many of the nation’s largest and most profitable employers struggle to get enough work hours (and sufficiently stable hours) to make ends meet, making fair scheduling as important as raising wages for millions of workers.
President Obama should sign a Good Jobs executive order to encourage contractors to improve workplace benefits and respect their employees’ rights to bargain collectively.
When you find a leak, do you jump up and point at it? Yell about it? What if the leak is part of a massive flood? Do you call up your friends and make plans to build a dam? What if the leak comes at you when you’ve been trapped in a basement with floodwater rising up to your neck?
Early Wednesday morning, many media outlets were buzzing with news of a leak.