You Can Take on Your Own Credit

People always expect to be charged with a huge amount of money when they ask for other people’s help so that their credit will be recovered. But the question is, are the big sums of money rangingfrom $800, $900 to $1,000 really a fair deal?

According to the Better Business Bureau’s president and CEO, Melanie A. Duquesnel clients can fix their credit on their without spending thousands of dollars.

Those who are struggling with their credit have to be smart and vigilant about these schemes. They often just end up doing more harm than good for your credit status.

Credit repair companies have been receiving various complaints in the St. Louise Better Business Bureau from unhappy clients claiming to have paid $816 in average. Many Americans are falling in their trap because they are desperate to recover from debt.

However, according to experts paying debts on time doesn’t necessarily mean your FICO score will improve. The scenario is, borrowers do not have the money to pay so the lender gives them the cash and agree to receive less amount of money for it until it is fully paid.

Credit repair agencies give the impression that it is easy to recover from bad credit. The St. Louise Better Business Bureau found out that clients do not only have problems with the lack of results in their credit scores, they are also nerved by the debt-settlement offers given by these companies.

Advertisements often make people believe in any claims that may just be untrue. Companies try to make their ads as enticing and manipulative to get customers to pay them for their services.

Furthermore, some customers’ lack of information and understanding on how the credit works makes them even more vulnerable to these manipulative attacks of companies.

So the best thing to do for clients is to get all the knowledge they can about the industry. Go to online to annualcreditreport.com and monitor your credit report, check for errors that might have occurred in the statement.

For Love or Money

Marriage is a lifetime partnership and commitment made by two people with each other. Though love could overlook some flaws about a person’s financial status, there are some financial blunders according to the recent TD Ameritrade survey that could ruin your chances in marrying the love of your life.

In the survey, the respondents were asked what issues about their future partner would make them think twice and call off the wedding. Among the categories they had to choose from were low credit score, few bank savings or none at all, high liabilities in credit cards, large debt for student loan, mortgage foreclosure, unemployment, no savings for retirement, and file of bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, though all the categories may seem like obvious marriage call-offs, many of the couples would choose to overlook these for their love. The most of the respondents however, find bankruptcy the most unappealing of all the blunders.

Only 32% of those who took the survey said that they would call off the wedding, while 27% would opt to postpone the wedding in a future time, while 41% majority of the takers say that neither measures were needed.

According to Carrie Braxdale, a managing director at TD Ameritrade newly wedded couples often struggle with their financial responsibilities. When they get married people tend to get their financial backgrounds and past debts into the marriage.

Thus, Braxdale advices couples to sit down and talk about their future especially their financial matters first before they exchange vows and say “I dos”. Here are some things that would prove beneficial for couples to know about their future partner:

You should know each other’s major debts and find a strategy together to help overcome them. You may also talk about future student loans you will be taking for your children, this talk is not only romantic but it will be a great deal of help for you two.

Know each other’s credit scores; you should know if you are financially capable. This is in case you need to buy a new house or a car because of your marriage.

You two should also have a broader understanding of investments. It is important for you two to have an ending goal and you should help each other work through them.

Habits should also be watched, if you are not a very good saver then your partner may help you with that problem. Your financial differences may be beneficial if only you could give each other the chance to help.

More Bad News for JPMorgan

JPMorgan Chase is in for more bad news as their credit continues to decrease these past few days. Fitch Ratings gave a lower rating of A+ to the financial agency after they lost $2 billion worth of dollars earlier last week.

According to Jamie Dimon the Chief Executive of JPMorgan, the company’s situation could get worse because they are not liquid enough and ratings companies are asking questions about their company’s risk management status, framework and practice.

The ratings industry head, says that JPMorgan Chase’s reputational and risk governance issues are not as good as they used to be however the current amount that the company is losing can be managed. According to reports JPMorgan’s, last week’s market shares was at $36.96, it went down by 9.3%, then after just a few hours it plunged further down to 0.8%  that’s $36.67.

The bank continues to be criticized and ridiculed by politicians and lawmakers as the ratio continues to drop. Thus a more convenient way for the firm is to have tighter measures and adapt to something like the Volcker Rule which can take care of too much risk-taking done by large banks.

The bank’s Executive Chief Mr.Dimon who has been getting positive regards about his efforts to get the bank back in tact has been open about his thoughts in implementing laws and regulations especially the Volcker Rule.

This however stirs questions from external sources whether the company has tried to implement the regulation in the past. However the total loss of $2 billion that was reported last week has weakened the arguments of the bank for their new measures. Bank investors are currently having difficulties in getting access to financial institutions and international trade and businesses.  Though JPMorgan Chase like the Bank of America and Citigroup have reports that can still be further evaluated, their unseen transactions and unclear records for their strategies could be destructive for them.

Credit Card Holders Reached The Highest Percentage Yet

A surprising twist has occurred in the credit card industry as more clients turn to credit card companies for loans. Customer borrowings surged up to $21.4 billion just as the month of March was about to end.

The percentage of credit card loaning and the amount of dollars loaned has reached its highest amount in March, breaking the November 2001 record. However there has also been a puzzling increase of $5.2 billion in the amount of revolving debt. This may be due to the downtrend of credit cards since the recession; the limited number of cards has also limited clients’ purchases.

Analysts still find it difficult to interpret the data that they have gathered about the sudden surge of credit card in March. Does the data indicate that customers are now more confident financially to get credit cards or are they in need of the cards to pay for their loans?

According to experts, in this stage, it is too early to tell what the customers are thinking. A little more time and credit data will be needed to truly understand the flow of the market today. In a few months, study will be able to answer if the Americans have truly recovered from the recession or are they still struggling through mortgages, unemployment and other unsettled accounts.

A recent research conducted by the Conference Board, the February and March data included an increase in the percentage of clients who are confident that their incomes will be increasing in the coming months. This is an indication that people are willing to borrow if they are expecting a larger amount of pay in the future.

On the other hand, an increase of 0.5% in the hourly pay has occurred in the last 3 months; also an 8.8% has hiked in the price of gasoline and a 0.9% inflation rate increase. To keep up with their lifestyle, some households have to borrow from credit companies.

But good news from the Energy Information Administration has burst out his week, gasoline prices will not exceed $5 a gallon, as analysts guessed. The price will be $3.70 per gallon in the summer.

U.S. Antitrust Probe of Debit Strategy Causes Visa’s Market Share Drop

The shares of Visa Inc. slid 4.7 percent, the biggest since August. This happened after an investigation on its pricing for debit-card transactions was done by the U.S. Antitrust Division. Visa Inc. is the world’s largest electronic-payments network.

According to Joseph W. Saunders, Chief Executive Officer of Visa Inc., the U.S. Justice Department’ Antitrust Division  inquired for information on March 13 about the company’s debit strategy  in San Francisco.

Visa must do some adjustment in some elements of its strategy, according to Tien-tsin Huang, a JP Morgan Chase & Co. analyst. Huang further said that it may take 9 to 24 months to resolve the issue and the investigation may put the revenue at risk by 2 percent.

After the U.S. ruling on the debit –card processing took effect in October, Saunders made an adjustment on the network’s fee structure to protect the market share of Visa.

Saunders said that they are confident about the actions that they are taking. In fact, in a conference call held, he mentioned that Visa posted an increase of 47 percent profit during the fiscal second-quarter. Saunders also said that the U.S. Justice Department requested for four other information from Visa since 2007 and all these issues have been resolved. For three months ending March 31, the net income rose to $1.29 billion, or $1.91 per share, from a previous record of $881 million, or $1.23 per share. The adjusted earnings per share excluding an accounting gain were $1.60 which is over than the forecast of 32 analysts by Bloomberg. The forecast was $1.51 earnings per share.

U.S. Credit products grow

The strong financial performance of Visa for this quarter was primarily due to the sustained growth of U.S. credit products and the cross-border spending and expansion of the company in the international markets, according to Saunders.

Visa and MasterCard, the number 2 network increased their profits because consumers worldwide are shifting from cash and checks to electronic payments. According to MasterCard, its profit increased by 21 percent in the first quarter surpassing the estimates of Wall Street. As spending increased the firm enlarged its market share resulting to a profit of $682 million.

Dodd-Frank Act helped MasterCard gained market share

MasterCard expanded its market and has been winning deals because of the limits imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act on debit-card transaction fees and processing, said Chief Financial Officer Martina Hund-Mejean. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. debit-card issuer has switched to MasterCard, Huang said.

Visa gives incentives

Visa made adjustments in its debit-card fees in April and designed incentives for merchants to attract more transactions. The fees are broken into three components, the fixed fee, the incentive portion that rewards credit to merchants for more use of the network, said CFO Byron Pollitt.

According to the Nilson Report, a newsletter based in Carpintera, California, Visa’s share of worldwide purchase transaction dropped by 1.1 percent points last year to 64.67 percent while that of MasterCard’s share recorded a growth of 0.5 percent to 25.57 percent.