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The History of Consumer Credit Counseling Services

People have had problems managing their credit for a long time, but prior to 1951, there were no resources available to assist them. In that year, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling was formed by creditors who initially came together for two primary purposes. The first was to monitor regulatory and legislative activity that affected the credit lenders in their membership base. Their other stated purpose was to produce and promote public awareness campaigns on budgeting, the responsible use of credit and avoidance of bankruptcy.

Although the NFCC was involved in public education efforts, they did not get involved in the collection efforts which their members took against people who owed them money. They served mainly as a trade agency to provide resources for both creditors and the public.

The NFCC was the only credit education agency in existence until the early 1960s when local debt help agencies began to form. These were community based programs which offered credit education and counseling directly to consumers who would meet in their offices for an individualized session. The NFCC continued to operate as a trade organization in which local debt help agencies could voluntarily subscribe to.

After 42 years of being the only trade organization in the consumer credit counseling industry, NFCC came up against some competition with the 1993 formation of the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies. AICCCA was founded on the basis of “creating industry-wide standards of excellence and ethical conduct” according to the group of financial counselors who created it.

Unlike the NFCC, the AICCCA was in favor of offering debt management programs to consumers over the telephone in addition to the option of in-person contact. Initially, the NFCC was vehemently opposed to providing credit counseling by telephone, but they did eventually succumb to this business practice. Over time, all types of consumer credit counseling agencies adopted telephonic delivery of their services which was aided by the use of large inbound call centers staffed by trained financial counselors. Eventually, debt management programs came to be offered over the Internet as well.

Another major shift in the consumer credit management industry came as the result of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. This law made it mandatory for consumers filing bankruptcy to seek and complete a course of budgeting and financial management in the six months immediately preceding filing for bankruptcy. The new law required that this program be completed through an approved nonprofit budget and credit counseling center. In addition to the bankruptcy requirement, the 2005 law also mandated consumers to complete a bankruptcy process course after their filing in order to have their debts legally discharged.

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How To Receive A Small Business Loan

You are able to extremely boost your possibilities in a successful manner ensuring a small business loan by getting ready to encounter those hopes.

Place yourself on the opposite side of the desk for a while. If somebody question you for a small business loan, you would demand to have knowledge of accurately reasons that he or she wanted the cash and what the possibilities were that he or she will pay back the credit completely and on schedule.

Thus the path to obtaining a small business loan is planning. Initially, bring together the papers that will assist you to convince the loaner that a small business loan is essential for you. You’ll be required:

A business strategy – The business strategy proves the loaner why you demand a small business loan and what you are going to do with the money.

Income and spending of cash money plans – Will you can payback the loan? Your trade’s cash flow projections provide loaners substantial monetary facts that they can use to estimate this risk.

A report of your individual economic position – A record of your individual resources and debts to deliver the loaner a fuller economic description.

To receive a small business loan, you are maybe required these papers:

Old trade assessment revenues – If your commerce is based and you have old trade assessments, it’s a great plan to get them with you. They will provide the loaner a more desirable idea of in what way your commerce is doing from a financial standpoint.

A credit rating report – Essentially, you found a credit check by purchasing things on credit and repay the money you have. Your loan paying back history plays a big part in setting up your credit rating, however all your “credit” behaviors build the history that is utilized to settle your credit report.

You do not have to give a credit outline when you apply to a small business loan. Loaners can get it comfortably. But if you do not have any information about you credit report or maybe it is damaged, you wish demand to have one.

You can supply your credit report from the offices Northern Credit Bureaus, TransUnion and EquiFax Canada. You are required to send a mail one of these firms to get your free credit report.

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Financial Security Is Up To You

If you are a Baby Boomer, hopefully you’ve spent at least a little bit of time over the past few decades thinking about the future. (Many of you actually haven’t and that is both sad and today, dangerous.)

When you’re young and vibrant, thinking about the really long term is almost an exercise in futility. You really can’t imagine what it will be like to turn 40 – let alone 50 or 60. Retirement is an abstract concept that you really can’t – or at least don’t want to – think about.

It’s pretty easy to defer long term planning when you are young. Back then, you had visions of becoming a millionaire at some point along the way, and financial issues later in life would be moot. Rich people don’t have to worry about money.

Well, actually they do, but that’s an entirely different story.

Another misconception that many younger people have – not just young Boomers back in the day, but the younger generations that follow – is that the government will make sure everything’s ok when you get older as well. After all, that’s what Social Security is all about, isn’t it?

Any Baby Boomer who started working in their twenties has already been working for 20 or 30 years, or more. The leading edge of the Boomers will turn 65 in 2011, the magic year that for some reason has always been identified with the mythical notion of “retirement.”

Our parents taught us to go out and find a job, work at it forever – with the same company of course – collect a healthy pension and have Social Security to fill in the gaps.

Along the way of course we’ve changed jobs multiple times, Bernie Madoff stole the pension money, and our savings has been gobbled up by who knows what.

Well, at least there’s Social Security to keep us safe.

Wrong.

After paying all that money in the form of Social Security taxes over the years, one would think that we’ll be able to collect nice fat checks in return, once we retire. Well think again.

To find out what you’ll actually be able to collect, check out the Social Security Administration (SSA) website. There you’ll find several calculators that you can use to determine what your benefits will be.

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The Purpose Of Taxation

If there is one thing that a lot of people hate doing is paying their taxes to the government. If this thing were voluntary, then very few people indeed would ever pay their taxes to the government. For this reason, a good number of people do not really see the importance of taxation, but they just see the government as this institution that is bent on sucking from them every single drop of blood until they drop dead. In this article, we are going to look at the purposes of taxation, so that you yourself can be better informed on the role that you are playing by paying your monies to the government.

Source Of Government Revenue

The first reason why societies have taxes is simply because of the fact that the government needs money for it to stay afloat. And although there are a number of governments in the world which heavily rely on other sources of income such as investments in corporations and so on, the revenue from taxation is one of the most reliable, and it is the one that most governments use for their expenses. From this money, they are able to build, roads, schools, employ officials and so on.

Redistribution Of Resources

The other reason why governments levy taxes on the citizens is because these government want to use the taxes for the purpose of redistribution of resources. As most people already know, one of the most important principles of taxation is the principle of equity. In this sense, you will find that the government can get money from the rich and then use it to pay the poor some unemployment benefits.

Economic Policies

Lastly, the government can also come up with very good policies by simply playing about with the taxation system. If the government wants to reduce the aggregate demand in the economy, it can do so by ensuring that they tax the people very much to avoid inflation. On the other hand, if at all the government wants to ensure that there is increased aggregate demand, they can do so by reducing the amount of direct taxes so that the taxpayers can have the opportunity of spending their cash on commodities.

It is important to note that the purposes that have been mentioned here are not juts stand-alone policies. At the end of the day, they different purposes will be able to interact with each other.

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Double Your Profits

With the economy faltering, customers hesitating and suppliers balking, every company worries about sustaining profits. In the face of these market forces, companies can rarely sell their way to higher profits. Although executives and employees can’t do much about the external forces, they can have a major impact internally.

Faced with shrinking profits, companies invariably try to cut costs by reducing staff, paying suppliers more slowly or “cheating” the customer by using inferior quality materials. These quality shortcuts can cripple and even kill a company in the long run.

Earnings shortfalls make everyone look for a quick fix. They settle for cheap tricks that damage the company’s reputation instead of focusing on ways to simplify, streamline and optimize the business to cut costs, boost profits and retain customers.

There is a better way that doesn’t take forever or cost a fortune.

1. Simplify
Every work area collects out-of-date equipment and materials. Keeping that junk around costs money and clutters the workspace. To trim costs and boost profits, start by going through every nook and cranny and throwing out everything that isn’t related to the current way work is done. Once the clutter is gone, it’s easier to streamline the workflow.

Then, organize and label the materials and equipment into consistent locations. It’s not unusual for work materials to be spread all over a workplace, making it difficult to find what is needed, when it is needed.

2. Streamline
The next step is to streamline the business by removing barriers and redesigning the work to minimize resistance and delays in the workflow. All businesses suffer from Lazy Product Syndrome (LPS). While employees work on the product or service for perhaps three minutes out of every hour, the product sits idle for the other 57 minutes (the 3-57 Rule). That’s why the elapsed time from order to delivery can take weeks instead of hours; hours instead of minutes; or minutes instead of seconds.

Take this test: Follow a customer’s order from start to delivery and notice just how little time is actually spent working the order. Notice how much time it spends in an inbox or an outbox or a queue somewhere. Notice how much time it spends waiting on the next step in its journey. The order spends 95 percent of its time waiting for something to happen.

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