Word: using
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...personal life, balancing finances hasn't been easy since Garcia and her sons' father separated more than a year ago. Family finances had always been tight, and with just one paycheck, Garcia found herself using credit cards to buy the basics. "Sometimes when you don't have money and you need to buy things for your kids, like food and stuff like that, you use the credit card because it's so easy," she says...
...bring the ballooning debt under control, she stopped using credit cards and made nominal payments on her accounts. "I thought if I sent them something, $10 or $20, they would leave me alone," she says. But she only fell further behind. Even in months when she didn't use the credit cards, the amount she owed rose because of late-payment penalties and interest charges. Before long, she needed to pay at least $300 a month just to stay even...
...Bankruptcy Court maintains no statistics on the types of debt written off--credit cards, medical, personal loans--or the total dollar amount discharged. But whatever that number may be, it misses the point: there is little more to be extracted from those in bankruptcy. Some people unquestionably use bankruptcy court to escape bills they could afford to pay, but their numbers are insignificant. The vast majority of bankruptcy filers have neither the income nor the assets to pay creditors. Most turn to bankruptcy as a last resort...
...other credit cards $3,000, to $4,000, to $5,000. They were already $15,000 in debt, and the banks continued to raise [the family's] credit limits because they are making the minimum payments. Once a family is over 30% debt-to-income ratio, it should stop using unsecured credit. But people don't know that. They think that because they've been approved for this higher credit limit, they can manage it." Because many people pay only the minimum amount due or a few dollars more, Fox says, they think everything is fine. But the balance...
...investments, customers of Ace Cash Express and other payday lenders have not fared nearly so well. As you might expect, people who pay interest charges of 300% or more often end up in bankruptcy court. Says David Nixon, a lawyer in Fayetteville, Ark.: "The kinds of people who use payday loans are just barely getting by. They have jobs. They work hard. They try to pay their bills, but they come up short. Here's an easy way to get cash fast--at least it seems easy. But it's like getting on a treadmill. Once they...