News

2011

July

26

• Short sales, long waits: Frustrating process. Short sales are among the most arduous real estate transactions, often taking six months or more to close -- if they get done at all. They can be a life raft for distressed homeowners who

• Every credit score is not created the same. If you spend any time on the Internet, you've probably seen ads for "free" credit scores. They usually appear alongside ads promising to make your belly fat disappear. There are two problems with these promotions.

20

• Your credit score may not be what you think. The credit score you get from an agency might be quite different from the credit score your lender gets, according to a new study released Tuesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The study found

• Consumer bureau fights to keep its fangs. President Barack Obama has brought in new leadership to the consumer agency created after the 2008 financial industry meltdown, a move widely seen as an effort to remove a potential political obstacle: Elizabeth Warren. But there

• App for reporting an emergency. Today, when a tornado leaves a path of destruction or a fire engulfs a home, you can be sure a citizen with a cellphone camera has captured the devastation and posted it to Facebook or

19

• Obama erred in dropping Elizabeth Warren to head agency. President Obama shouldn't have backed down. In announcing Monday that he's nominating former Ohio Atty. Gen. Richard Cordray to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Obama clearly hoped to leapfrog over opposition to his

• Medicare doesn’t cover many health-care expenses. Helen Johnson gave a welcoming smile to the group of older men and women who had assembled at the senior center in the Maryland Eastern Shore town of Snow Hill on a recent evening. All

16

• What can you expect from Social Security. People are scared. As President Obama and congressional leaders continue to fight over how to reduce the federal deficit, people are rightly concerned about what they can expect to get from Social Security. Right now,

14

• Medicare age hike could save billions. A White House offer to increase the age of Medicare eligibility to 67 as a compromise to Republicans during budget talks would save about $125 billion over 10 years, records show, but such a move could leave many

12

• Denied a loan? Get a free credit score. As part of an effort to pull back the curtain on how creditors go about making their lending decisions, consumers are soon going to find out exactly why they got rejected for a credit card

• Health officials ease requirements for insurance exchanges. he Obama administration moved Monday to ease some requirements on states to help them set up new insurance exchanges in 2014, a key feature of the healthcare law the president signed last year. The state-based exchanges

• Boomers who work longer get more from Social Security. Most of us aren't very good at delayed gratification, which is why so many pies mysteriously disappear before it's time for dessert. Social Security is no exception. Most seniors file for benefits as soon as

07

• GM offers free auto insurance to new-car buyers. Out in states like California, uninsured motorists remain a serious problem. So General Motors is involved in an experiment in two states that could help insure more drivers. The test is taking place in Oregon

• HUD to pay $62 million to Louisiana homeowners. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Wednesday that it will pay as much as $62 million to 1,300 Louisiana homeowners to settle a lawsuit alleging that a program that awarded federal grants to

05

• Agency builder, not yet its leader. It is conventional wisdom in this town that the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be anyone but Elizabeth Warren. In nine months overseeing the bureau's start-up, Elizabeth Warren has made

• Borrowers take banks to court after loan modification mishaps. It seemed Maria Campusano’s financial problems were behind her when the mortgage on her Victorian home in a Massachusetts mill town was chopped by hundreds of dollars a month. She soon learned that her

• HUD to give $1 billion to struggling homeowners. Sandra Allwine has been pleading with her bank for more than two years to modify the mortgage on her Arlington County home. Despite exhausting all her savings and having her daughter move in to help

June

30

• Health care costs vary widely nearby. Patients pay as much as 683% more for the same medical procedures, such as MRIs or CT scans, in the same town, depending on which doctor they choose, according to a new study by a national

28

• Insurance claim denied? Appeal. Nobody wants to get into a fight with a health insurer, but it may be worth your while. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that more claims problems stemmed from annoying but often straightforward

• 401(k) plans with lifelong income options. The financial and emotional scars of the bear market still have many Baby Boomers in limbo, unsure if their savings will last their lifetime. Keying on those worries, the 401(k) industry has started providing products