Archive for November, 2007

Thanksgiving is easily in the top two or three holidays for most Americans. Who doesn’t love spending time with family and gorging themselves all sorts of delicious tryptophan laced foods? Thanksgiving day is usually extremely relaxing and fun, unless you have to cook. It takes a lot of work to make a dinner like that [...]

The weather that the United States has been having this fall has been ironic if nothing else. Some parts of the country have more water than they know what to do with mean while others are droughts and record low amounts of rain. If you’re in part of the country that just doesn’t have enough [...]

For the last five years or so, many of the nation’s major banks and financial institutions have been originating all sorts of non-traditional mortgages such as interest only loans, adjustable rate mortgages, mortgages with balloons, fifty year mortgages, and a whole slew of other financial products that no consumer should ever buy. Unsurprisingly, many consumers [...]

We’re going to start a new weekly feature on American Consumer News which will highlight some of the gems from the financial and consumer blogosphere that the American Consumer News staff has read throughout the week. Here’s a roundup of some of the great things we’ve read this week:   How Much Money Does Turning [...]

Craigslist.com revolutionized the classified ads industry and turned newspapers’ extremely profitable classifieds into a barren wasteland in some markets. It’s given us all the opportunity to list our used cars, apartment rentals and baby pets that need to given away all for free, but it’s also given scam artists an entirely new venue to try [...]

Many people get sucked into a lease agreement for their car because the monthly payments are much lower, but after you factor in the up-front fee due at signing and the amount of money you would have to pay to buy out the vehicle at the end of the lease, it becomes the single most [...]

With the holiday shopping season upon us, online stores will start to see an increase in sales and people like us will see a decrease in the depth of our wallets!  If you’re like most people, you probably dread the holiday shopping- and not because you don’t want to get your family and friends nice [...]

Perhaps one of the most interesting examples of capitalism in the last few decades is the practice of consumers flocking to retailers before the crack of dawn on the day after Thanksgiving, known as “Black Friday.” Consumers fight huge crowds and go store to store looking for great deals on Christmas gifts, and retailers make [...]

Credit card issuers are constantly trying to out do one another with better promotions and offers, and the quality of the promotional offers seems to increase around the holiday season.   Card issuers are competing for their share of the holiday shopping spending. This is a good time of year to take advantage of credit card [...]

Recently the South Dakota social services office published a report that said the average individual that received food stamps was living on just under $25.00 a week for a grocery budget. They took this information and decided to create an awareness campaign by challenging many prominent officials and businessman to try to live on $25.00 [...]

Everyone needs to have access to ‘short term savings’.  It’s the money you pull from when you have all those unexpected expenses, like maybe a heat bill that’s three times what you budgeted for.  Short term savings is also good for life’s little emergencies, when your car suddenly decides not to move another inch until [...]

Paying the bills often hurts our wallets; but did you know paying the bills can also hurt your credit score sometimes?  Many consumers who have an account in collections, charge-off status or delinquency status on their credit reports find that their credit scores actually drop when they pay them off. At one time in the [...]

Most of us start shaving at a very young age, often as young as 16. When we notice our faces getting a little bit scraggly for the first time, our parents show us how to lather up with shaving cream and get rid of our excess body hair with disposable razor. Hair keeps growing, so [...]

Your credit score is used whenever you try to get a loan, want to rent an apartment, apply for a job, sign up for a credit card and even when you start a new cell phone plan. This calculated number affects us in many more ways than we realize, yet very few of us understand [...]