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It is with great enthusiasm that we announce out 2nd scholarship winner.  The Debt Fighters support an academic scholarship contest for students who share a time in their life where they learn the importance of financial planning and discuss their financial plan going into the future. Peyton Myles, a student based in California, started her own dance company at 17 years old, and has taken much of the profit from her business and dedicated it to charity.  In the meantime, she works at the local hospital and is interning at a law firm.  Her essay shows incredible attention to financial… Read More

The law governing consumer debt collection is changing. For starters, third-party debt collectors will soon be able to contact you on social media. Just what we all wanted, debt collectors friending us on Facebook. But there’s a whole lot more. For seven years, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been working on the Final Rule to apply the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  Whether you know it or not, if you are one of the 68 million American adults in debt collection, this will have a big impact on you. The National Law Review calls these updates “the most significant… Read More

You are probably tired of hearing about the importance of checking your credit score regularly. But an ostrich with their head in the sand is an easy target for lions, and if you are not regularly checking your credit reports, you may fall prey to increasingly worse financial difficulties. What Is a Credit Score? A credit score is a number used to convey how likely you are to repay lenders or become delinquent. Usually people are talking about a FICO score (developed by Fair Isaac Corporation), but there are other measurements. The big three credit agencies all use FICO scores… Read More

We are near the end of the financial year for individuals, and it’s time to bite the bullet and review your personal finances. You should be checking and organizing your finances on a monthly basis, and your year-end financial review should be based on these monthly check-ins. But there are certain aspects you want to carefully review before the year-ends to see the big picture:  where you are, where you want to be and what changes you need to make. Let’s face it, not everyone carefully takes stock of their finances every month. If you are in debt, you may… Read More

In Kelly Ann Smith’s Article, How to Untangle Joint Credit Card Debt in Divorce, she does a great job of identifying the fundamentals of how debt is divided in a divorce.  In a nutshell, the divorce judge will assign who is responsible to pay for which balances.  The tough part is that the way that the divorce judge carves up the pie does not change who is signed to the loans.  So if the divorce judge says, for example, that former husband is supposed to pay former wife’s Amex card, but that doesn’t happen, then Amex could still sue and… Read More

The pandemic has forced companies to change the way they operate. Because of the lockdown, they have had to lean on remote workers to survive. As a result, many workers have lost their jobs and faced difficulties. Due to the high demand for tech professionals, gaining these skills could help you in the future. To remain competitive, many people have begun to learn tech skills. However, moving in the right direction might be hard if you don’t know where to start. If you’re jobless and struggling to find work, these tips will help you tackle unemployment amid Covid-19. You’ll get… Read More

I’m going to let you in a little secret.  Not everyone who is trying to tame their debt needs bankruptcy.  In some instances, taking out a debt consolidation loan to refinance your debt is the best option. There, I said it.  Now every other bankruptcy attorney in town wants to throw a rock at me! In all seriousness, debt problem-solving is largely about proportionality.  What I mean by that is if someone has $50k in debt, but they make $200k per year, their debt is probably manageable.  Whereas if someone has $50k in debt, but they make $30k per year,… Read More

In July, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published a quarterly report on Recent Trends in Debt Settlement and Credit Counseling.  The report comes from work undertaken by the Bureau to highlight developments for customers who are no longer able to handle their unsecured loans. Debt settlements rose dramatically during the Great Recession into a peak of $11.4 billion. Over half of those settlements occurred within a year of the accounts becoming delinquent.  Debt settlement and credit counseling became less common after that recession, but recently settlements have been rising after changes in delinquencies and charge hindrance. Nearly one in thirteen… Read More

Congratulations to Attorney Cassidy Fordiani for graduation from the 8-week Dale Carnegie professional development course!  Attorney Fordiani was awarded the Human Relations Award for Leadership in recognition of her efforts during the course. Dale Carnegie training is recognized across the world and by countless notable executives for its role in their professional growth. Attorney Fordiani joined the Debt Fighters in September, 2019, where she leads our debt defense and negotiation team.  Her graduation is a great milestone and it is amazing to see her dedication to her work and professional development!

While you were stuck at home, debt collectors saw fish in a barrel to collect on past due balances While so many consumers and small businesses are fighting tooth and nail to stay afloat, a survey from Prodigal Technologies, Inc, indicates that more than half of Debt Collectors outperformed their pre-COVID metrics.  Prodigal’s press release on their survey attributes several factors to the uptrend, but one factor in particular for successful debt collection firms was that they were better able to track borrowers while consumers were stuck at home with Safer-at-Home orders. This data should be an important point for… Read More