GreenPath Debt Solutions Kicks Off the New Year With New Online Webinar Series
FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., Jan. 16, 2012 —
Webinar Wednesday, hosted by GreenPath University, premieres January 18, noon EST with an interactive discussion on “Unlocking the Secret to your Credit Score”
FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., Jan. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – GreenPath Debt Solutions, a nationally non-profit financial counseling agency, will be premiering a new way for learning with the launch of the group’s online “Webinar Wednesday,” starting January 18.
Each Wednesday, GreenPath will host educational webinars starting at noon EST. The webinars will be coordinated by GreenPath University, the company’s education group, and last 45 minutes with time unfilled for questions and answers. GreenPath will figure a uncommon topic each week.
“We’ve had fantastic interest in the first webinar with public signing up across the country from New York, Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, Pennsylvania and several other states,” said Megan Bridgett, GreenPath trainer and co-lead for GreenPath’s Webinar Wednesday. “We are looking forward to a fun, informative session with lots of interaction between our instructors and those online.”
The January 18 webinar will cover “Unlocking the Secret to Your Credit Score.” This course is designed to help gain a better appreciative of what makes up a credit score and what individuals can do to improve it.
Webinar Wednesday is another way that GreenPath Debt Solutions provides educational outreach to the community. Registration is free by sorting on through GreenPath University at www.greenpath.org/university and clicking on the “Free Classes Every Week” announcement.
Other upcoming webinars include:
12 Money Mistakes You Can’t Afford to MakeGreenPath has exposed the common mistakes that can cost public hundreds of thousands of dollars, and will lecture participants how to avoid them. Wednesday, January 25 and March 14.
Protect Your Identity From email scams and phishing to credit card skimming and fake pre-approval offers, identity theft is on the rise. This course will lecture practical tips on ways to avoid becoming a victim, as well as what to do if you suspect your identity has been stolen. Wednesday, February 1 and February 22.
Keys to First Time Home Export Export your first home can be an exciting and memorable experience. It can also be confusing and overwhelming. If you are considering export your first home, you will want to attend this course. GreenPath will grant valuable tips to make the first-time home export experience a successful one. Wednesday, February 8, and February 29.
What’s On Your Credit Report? Reviewing your credit report is an elemental step to financial success. GreenPath will discuss ways to track your credit report for free, appreciative what is on your report, as well as handling inaccuracies and ways to prevent fraud. Wednesday, February 15 and March 7
About GreenPath Debt SolutionsGreenPath Debt Solutions is a nationally, non-profit financial organization that assists consumers with credit card debt, housing debt and bankruptcy concerns. Their customized air force and manageable solutions have been helping public achieve their financial goals since 1961. Headquartered in Farmington Hills, Michigan, GreenPath operates more than 50 full-time branch offices in Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, Colorado, Florida, Texas, Vermont, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Arizona and Wyoming. GreenPath also delivers licensed air force throughout the United States over the Internet and telephone. GreenPath is a member of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) and is accredited by the Council on Accreditation (COA). For more information, visit www.greenpath.org.
Unfilled Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.Andrew Johnson http://www.profnetconnect.com/andrew-johnson
SOURCE GreenPath Debt Solutions
Eurozone debt crisis likely to be over soon, predicts HSBC
Meanwhile, Michel Barnier, the European Commissioner for Internal Markets,
played down the SP lower to the Asian audience, saying that he felt
ratings agencies should “always be transparent” and that he “was always
surprised by the timing of these announcements”. He added: “I reckon ratings
agencies should take more account of the efforts being made by governments
[to resolve the problems]”.
As he drummed up the UK as a destination for Asian investment, Mr Osborne drew
a clear line between Britain’s fiscal discipline and that of the rest of the
Euro zone.
“The financial crisis and the deep recessions has been the toughest of
reminders of the simple truth that you have to earn your income in this
world,” he said.
“And the lesson of the past year has been that global confidence in a country
depends on its determination to deal decisively with the challenges it faces
– and by getting to grip with our debts, Britain has publicized it is determined
to do that.”
A straw poll of the floor, but, revealed that barely any of the attendees
saw investment potential in Europe, preferring the prospects of China, South
East Asia, India and the United States.
While most of Asia’s economies are still showing robust growth, led by China,
there is widespread anxiety that Europe’s problems could trigger another
financial crisis.
Exports from Asia to Europe have slowed, and Haruhiko Kuroda, the president of
the Asian Development Bank, said he had noticed Western banks pulling away
from Asia and tapering credit, a go which has seen borrowing costs in
the region start to creep up.
KK Modi, the founder and chairman of the Modi group, the £1.8bn Indian
industrial conglomerate said India’s economy was being hurt by capital
flight as developed countries started to pull out of the region.
“India’s companies are building lots of money but investment is falling.
Interest rates have gone up because the money is not unfilled. The money is
being pulled out of India and it is not being replaced by other Asian
capital. Asians do not know each other’s markets. We do not know
Chinese laws, for example,” he said.
And while Mr Flint predicted a timely end to Europe’s debt woes, his outlook
for the year remained cautious.
“What the European crisis has pointed out is that the whole world has to
reflect very carefully about what the aggregate of political promises on
benefits, healthcare and pensions is and whether it will take up again to be
affordable given the global growth profile of today,” he said.
“We expected in 2007 that there would be a very strong spring back in 2012. Now we
have the realisation that these burdens may not be affordable. Everywhere I
go, public know the problem acutely. They know what needs to be done.
They know the dire consequences if it is not done.”
He said companies were building up their weigh sheets in part because of the
lack of liquidity in the financial system, but in part out of dread at their
spiralling pension costs.
John Rice, the vice chairman of General Electric, concurred that dealing with
Europe’s debt problems would be less hard, in the long term, than
resolving the “social overhang” being caused by the West’s ageing population.
He said GE would focus this year on the huge plea for infrastructure in the
developing world.
“We are seeing an alignment around basic infrastructure needs. The Arab Spring
may be a sign of that, although it is larger than the Arab Spring,” he told
the forum.
“What we are seeing is that with social and income inequalities, more and more
countries have realised they have to address that. And they are doing this
by investing in infrastructure – power generation, healthcare and clean
water. That is why they are focusing on this. They realised what happens
when you do not grant these basic needs.”
Big day for health care reform
President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act cleared another legal hurdle Wednesday with the help of a deciding vote from an unlikely ally — a Republican judge.
The three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled 2-1 in favor of health care reform’s individual mandate provision that will require all Americans to buy a minimal amount of health insurance by 2014.
Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a George W. Bush appointee and former law clerk for evenhandedness Antonin Scalia, and Judge Boyce F. Martin, a Jimmy transporter appointee, voted to uphold the individual mandate. Judge James Graham, a Ronald Reagan appointee, cast the dissenting vote.
The choice marks the first time that a Republican-appointed centralized judge has affirmed the legal merits of the provision, which cites a 1942 Supreme Court choice granting Congress the power to regulate interstate buying.
Previous challenges in U.S. district court have been chose on party lines. Free appointees have upheld the law in four courts; Republican appointees have declared key provisions unconstitutional in two courts.
This court challenge by Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Thomas More Law Center claims that while Congress was granted the power to regulate activity, it has no such constitutional mandate to regulate inactivity, such as failing to buy health insurance. The center claims such a mandate would place an undue financial burden on its plaintiffs.
But the court upheld the right of Congress to regulate the market of self-insurance for health care, in which Americans try to get by without paying for health insurance. This market directly affects interstate buying by successfully shifting the costs of the uninsured onto to those who have health insurance.
The government argued successfully that the individual mandate was necessary to keep the costs of health care reform from unfairly falling on the insured and providers.
“Congress had a rational basis for concluding that the minimum coverage provision is elemental to the Affordable Care Act’s larger reforms to the national markets in health care delivery and health insurance,” Judge Martin wrote for the majority.
More than two dozen states have filed legal actions challenging health care reform. The fate of the ACA will likely rest with the Supreme Court.
What significance would you place on this latest ruling, the first by a centralized appeals court?
And did it leave you celebrating or fuming?
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Debt Adviser: Steps to take to resolve your bankruptcy – Record
Dear Debt Adviser,
I am in the worst kind of financial hardship. My wages are already being garnished, which makes it hard to keep up with mortgage and utilities. I can’t file bankruptcy because I don’t have the money to pay, and my mortgage is now behind. My credit score is in the low to mid-500s. I don’t know what to do. I am applying for loans but keep getting turned down. I pleaded with the debt collection agency to work out a monthly payment plot, but it is not willing to help. I don’t know what else to do.— RichDear Rich,
You are attacking this problem from the incorrect end. Saying you don’t have the money for bankruptcy and pleading with a collector are nonstarters in my book. When a person is serious about getting something, they sometimes say they’ll do it if they have to beg, borrow or steal. Well you already know that begging and borrowing won’t work for you. That leaves stealing! Not someone else’s money, but your own.
It’s right a bankruptcy lawyer may not want to take your case unless you can give him or her a fee up front. After all, you are about to stiff others whom you promised to pay, so the lawyer has a valid concern about working with you without payment in advance. Here are three suggestions to getting around this problem.
First, you can search for a pro bono attorney at probono.abiworld.org. You may be able to get legal help for free.
Second, you may be able to file your case on your own if you do some research. It is called a pro se filing and happens all the time if your case isn’t too complex.
Third, you could take your next paycheck, pay no one and go directly to your attorney’s office and file.
Once you have filed for bankruptcy, your wage garnishment will stop. Creditors included in the filing must stop all collection activity after a bankruptcy is filed, including garnishment proceedings. Your extra wages should help you catch up on your mortgage payments and help in solving one of your financial troubles.
But to ensure this mess won’t happen again, what you need is to determine the underlying causes of your debt, so you know and know how you finished up in your current financial hardship. Even more importantly, you need to know how to prevent ending up there again. To do so, I urge you gather all your financial statements, bills, etc., and take a comprehensive look at everywhere you are and why it happened.
It may help to have an unbiased, expert opinion on your financial situation. You can enlist the help of a certified credit counselor for no charge. Contact a nonprofit member agency of the Friendship of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies or the National Foundation for Credit Counseling for help. You’ll need to contact them anyhow as a part of your bankruptcy filing (you must receive pre-filing counseling). Your counselor will review your income and expenses and help you piece together how you finished up with a wage garnishment and are now behind on your mortgage.
Moving forward, keep in mind what you learned from your exhaustive review of your finances, follow a spending plot that keeps your expenses below your income and save money in an emergency savings account. We all make mistakes in life. The goal is to learn from them and not repeat them.
Excellent luck!
InCharge Exhibiting at American Bankruptcy Institute Conference
ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 12, 2012 — InCharge Debt Solutions, a leading provider of Bankruptcy education courses, participates in the Boston conference next week.
ORLANDO, Fla., Jan. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — InCharge® Debt Solutions (“InCharge”) is a U.S. Trustee-approved non-profit credit counseling agency that offers both the pre-filing and pre-discharge courses required of bankruptcy petitioners. InCharge bankruptcy education clients completed 243,000 of these courses in 2011. InCharge also actively participates in conferences for bankruptcy attorneys and will be showcasing its Pre-Filing Credit Counseling, Pre-Discharge Debtor Education courses to attorneys at the American Bankruptcy Institute’s (ABI) 4th Annual Northeast Consumer Winter Forum to be held January 16, 2012, at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110307/DC60592LOGO)
The ABI conference focuses on new amendments for proofs of claim under the Centralized rules of bankruptcy procedure and other current developments in litigation and has sessions for Stage 7 and Stage 13 bankruptcy law.
“The number of private bankruptcy filings really fell by 12% in 2011 according to American Bankruptcy Institute data,” said Beth Mason, InCharge’s Director of Outreach Programs for Bankruptcy Air force. “But, most experts judge that number will increase in 2012, and the need for dialogue, education and professional air force will be more in plea that ever. InCharge is an active supporter of ABI events with these factors in mind.”
The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Safeguard Act of 2005, or BAPCPA, requires debtors to complete both Pre-Filing Credit Counseling and Pre-Discharge Debtor Education courses. InCharge and its affiliates is an EOUST-approved provider, with clients completing over 800,000 with InCharge since the company initiated the educational offering in 2006.
Attorneys and anyone in quest of a reliable and professional source for consumer bankruptcy courses are clear to visit the InCharge booth at this event. In addition to exhibiting, InCharge will be sponsoring the opening breakfast from 8:00 a.m.-9:00 a.m. on Monday the 16th.
InCharge Debt Solutions, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, provides free bankruptcy counseling, credit counseling, and housing counseling air force to consumers and servicemembers in need of financial literacy education, money management guidance, and help finding the right debt solution for their specific situation.
For more information, contact InCharge Debt Solutions:
- For bankruptcy air force, call 866-729-0049.
- For credit counseling, call 877-486-4924.
- For housing counseling air force, call 877-251-1882.
- For servicemembers, call 877-258-9549.
- or visit us online at www.InCharge.org
About InCharge® Debt SolutionsInCharge® Debt Solutions is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization specializing in private finance education, housing counseling, bankruptcy air force, and credit counseling. Founded in 1997, InCharge interacted with over 1.2 million consumers in 2010 alone. InCharge is affiliated with InCharge® Education Foundation, Inc. (ICEF) which is dedicated to providing educational products, air force and research supporting the private financial literacy of consumers across America. ICEF also provides financial literacy training to servicemembers and their families through MilitaryMoney.com. InCharge is a member of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), and is accredited by the Council on Accreditation (COA).
Contact: Media RelationsInCharge® Debt Solutions(407) 532-5599mediarelations@incharge.org
SOURCE InCharge Debt Solutions
‘Obamacare’ benefits everyone
This March, the Supreme Court will hear opinion on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, which for the first time will require all Americans to obtain health insurance two years from now under a provision called the individual mandate.
If the nine justices rule that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, those 26 states challenging health care reform will urge them to take the next step and scrap the rest of the Affordable Care Act as well.
I’m a huge fan of President Obama’s historic health care reform. Without it, health care’s ruinous fee-for-service paradigm that has hijacked uncomplaining care in the name of profit could very likely guide our economy off the cliff.
The individual mandate would assure an additional 30 million Americans, some with the help of government subsidies. Since we’re already essentially subsidizing the uninsured who are forced to use places such as emergency rooms as their primary care provider, reallocating tax dollars toward their preventive care seems to me far more humane and sustainable.
I know that being forced to buy health insurance rubs many Americans the incorrect way. Should the Supreme Court agree with them, so be it.
But before they toss the baby with the bath water, I hope the justices will consider the benefits that health care reform is already providing to millions of Americans. For example:
- 2.5 million young adults have been allowed to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.
- All Americans who enrolled in a health care plot after Sept. 23, 2010 now delight in access to free preventive air force, including cancer and cholesterol screenings, mammograms, colonoscopies, flu and pneumonia shots, vaccinations against measles, hepatitis and meningitis, blood pressure checks and nutrition counseling.
- 20.5 million Medicare recipients reviewed their health status at a free Annual Wellness Visit or expected other preventive air force with no deductible or cost sharing this year.
- 1.8 million Medicare recipients expected a 50 percent money off on brand-name drugs in the Medicare Part D coverage gap renowned as the “doughnut hole” in the first nine months of 2011.
- 4 million small businesses are now eligible for tax credits of up to 35 percent to help cover their employees. The credit jumps to 50 percent in 2014.
- Your health insurance company is now required to spend at least 80 percent of your premium (85 percent for large employer plans) directly on your care and well-being or rebate the difference to you beginning this summer.
- Americans with pre-existing conditions can now obtain coverage through a pre-existing condition insurance plot.
- Insurance companies can no longer place lifetime dollar limits on elemental benefits for policies written after Sept. 23, 2010. Annual dollar limits will be prohibited beginning in 2014.
I hope the individual mandate stands. I want all Americans to have access to health care coverage. Don’t you?
But even if it doesn’t, by what logic would anyone undo all of the excellent listed above?
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