Category: Personal Finance

New York Times, June 22, 2013 Given the speed with which 401(k) accounts have been replacing pensions, workers can only hope that their employers have assembled a low-cost diversified portfolio that will keep earning money over time — perhaps a long time, given the number of people living to their 90s and beyond. It is an employer’s legal duty, after all, to look after their employees’ interest in overseeing the accounts. A series of lawsuits making their way through the c ...

Legislators Weigh Capping High-interest 'Car-title Loans' San Franciso Chronicle, May 4, 2013 The pitches sound enticing. "Need cash? Have bad credit? No problem. You can get a loan today by using your car as collateral - and you get to keep driving it." These "car-title loans," also called "pink-slip loans" and "auto-equity loans," are a booming industry in California, where 38,000 people took out $134 million worth in 2011, according to the Department of Corporations. ...

The St. Louis Equal Housing and Community Reinvestment Alliance (SLEHCRA) is a coalition of non-profit and community organizations in the St. Louis metropolitan area.  The organization works to increase investment in minority communities, regardless of income, and in low- and moderate-income communities, regardless of race, by ensuring that banks are meeting their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act and fair lending laws. Consumers Council of Missouri actively parti ...

Washington Post, printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 24, 2013 WASHINGTON • Banking regulators are set to hand down tough new rules to govern short-term, high-interest loans that have been blamed for trapping some Americans in a cycle of debt, according to people familiar with the matter. The rules, which are slated to come out Thursday, could radically alter the operations of the small but growing number of banks, including Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp, that offer l ...

Center for Responsible Lending, printed in the North Dallas Gazette, March 26, 2013 In today’s challenging financial times, the cost of living finds many consumers with an ongoing financial challenge to hold on until their next payday arrives. Even worse, when banks peddle predatory payday loans, they pose serious threats to their customers’ financial well-being. Marketed under names like “direct deposit advance”, these loans are easy to get; but hard to pay off. As consumers ge ...

St. Louis Beacon, September 3, 2012 Legal challenges won’t go forward to get initiatives raising the minimum wage and restricting “payday” loans on the ballot, according to organizers of the two efforts. Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office announced in August that initiative petitions to raise the minimum wage to $8.25 an hour and restrict interest rates on payday loans didn’t receive enough signatures in two St. Louis-based congressional districts. Spokespeople for th ...

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 6, 2012 Robbery with a pen will continue to be legal in Missouri with the announcement Monday that Missourians for Responsible Lending had abandoned its campaign to cap payday loan interest rates in the face of well-financed opposition from the industry. What this means is that instead of capping the interest rates and fees for payday loans at a relatively reasonable 36 percent, they will continue to soar to their average rate of 445 percent ...

St. Louis Post-Disptach, August 1, 2010 Sandra Ahmedin, 65, was broke, and the rent was due. After deciding a car-title loan was her only option, the north St. Louis woman borrowed $800. She's paid back close to four times that much, but she hasn't reduced the loan's principal. Although she stopped making payments — "I've paid enough already," she insisted — she fears the lender, Missouri Title Loans, will seize her 2001 Dodge Intrepid. This wasn't supposed to happen in Mi ...

ThinkProgress, February 3, 2014 The Postal Service (USPS) could spare the most economically vulnerable Americans from dealing with predatory financial companies under a proposal endorsed over the weekend by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). “USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don’t have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighborhoods,” Warren wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed on ...

St. Louis Equal Housing and Community Reinvestment Alliance (SLEHCRA) is a coalition of non-profit and community organizations working to increase investment in low- and moderate-income communities, regardless of race, and in minority communities, regardless of income, by ensuring that banks are meeting their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act and fair lending laws. In August SLEHCRA released a report in conjunction with the 50th commemoration of the Jeff ...