Category: General

Stay-at-home spouses and partners should soon find it easier to get a credit card. Following through on changes originally proposed last fall, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau just issued a final rule to amend Regulation Z, which implements the Truth in Lending Act. Under the amendment, credit card issuers are no longer required to consider a consumer’s independent ability to repay a debt. Instead, issuers are once again allowed to consider income and assets that an applicant, who is 21 or older, has a “reasonable expectation of access.” This means that consumers should soon be able to apply for credit based on household income once again.
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With April 15 just around the corner, it seems as good a time as any to revisit some common questions about taxes and your credit card. Are your credit card rewards taxable? What about credit card sign-up bonuses? How can you optimize your credit card spending if you own a small business? Read on to find the answers to these questions and more.
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Irresponsible use of credit sent the economy crashing just a few years ago, but it seems that now the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction. According to the latest data from Fitch Ratings, consumers are being more responsible than ever with their credit. Delinquencies are at historic lows with more people paying off their balance in full every month and fewer carrying a balance.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently proposed a new rule that would remove a provision of the CARD Act that currently makes it difficult for stay-at-home spouses or partners to obtain credit. Under present regulations put into place in October 2011 as part of the CARD Act, a card issuer generally may only consider an individual card applicant’s income and assets when making a decision on whether to grant credit. The proposed rule would allow credit card issuers to ask card applicants 21 and over for income to which they have a “reasonable expectation of access,” which could include household income, and to remove all references to the “independent” ability to pay.
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Back in June, banking analyst Ken Thomas released a study based on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s complaints database that measured consumer satisfaction. Basically, he took the number of complaints for each issuer and divided that number by the issuer’s market share to come up with an index–the lower the index, the better. The theory was that bigger issuers should naturally have more complaints, so a better gauge of satisfaction would be to normalize the complaints based on market share.

I thought it would be interesting to update these results with the latest months of data.
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Perhaps the reforms made as part of the Credit CARD Act are paying off. According to the latest credit card satisfaction survey conducted by JD Power, overall customer satisfaction is at its highest level since the company began its survey 6 years ago.
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In publishing its database of consumer credit card complaints, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hoped to improve the transparency and efficiency of the credit card market. Indeed, the data that has been gathered already provides a revealing glimpse of the industry.

While the CFPB’s public database currently only contains the complaints that have been filed since June 1, through filing a Freedom of Information Act request, banking analyst Ken Thomas obtained 13,502 credit card complaints filed with the CFPB for the second half of 2011 and most of the first half of 2012. Thomas then used this data to measure credit card companies’ customer satisfaction.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government’s watchdog agency tasked with regulating consumer financial products and services, just unveiled the initial version of its online database that catalogs consumer complaints against credit card companies.
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Late last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) opened its doors for business. The fledgling agency was created as a result of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) with a concentrated focus on consumer welfare, rather than on bank safety or monetary policy. It centralizes responsibilities that previously had been spread across many different government agencies.
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One of the Credit CARD Act’s goals is to make sure that individuals can really afford to repay what they borrow. In particular, the Fed wants to protect teenagers from digging themselves into a deep hole of credit card debt.

Sometimes, however, good intentions can result in inconvenient consequences.
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