Where You Can Make the Best of a Bad Credit Situation

It’s no fun having a bad credit score. You pay higher interest rates for your credit – if you can get credit at all. You have little room for financial error. A small, unexpected bill can cause big problems.

At least your hardships may not be as bad if you live in certain states.

RewardExpert, a site that helps users optimize credit and debit card reward programs, examined factors that affect residents with poor credit – such as typical expenses, usury laws to limit predatory lending, and the status of debt collectors – and how those factors vary in each state.

Where is bad credit more tolerable? Consumers with bad credit should avoid the coasts and stick to the Midwest – not surprising, given the typically high costs of living in coastal areas.
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Act Before May 31 to Get Your Money Back

Although Western Union has served as a reliable method for rapidly sending money over long distances since the late 1800s, the service is also used by scammers with increasing frequency.

This has resulted the settlement of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) charges that Western Union had not been doing enough to protect consumers from these scammers.

The FTC has tallied over 550,000 consumer complaints of fraudulent money transfers involving Western Union between January 2004 and August 2015.
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It Will Cost You More to Buy a Home

The housing market topped a new threshold over the past week. Buoyed by a strong economy and a series of interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve, thirty-year fixed mortgage interest rates reached 4.61 percent – the highest number since May of 2011.

Rates crossed the 4 percent threshold in the week of January 11 and they have been on a relatively steady rise since then. If this pace continues, we may hit 5 percent before the year is out.

Should rising interest rates deter you from buying a home? Not necessarily, but it may cause you to re-think your definition of an affordable home.
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