The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

“This matter is serious and will cause problems at the job.”

Believe it or not this is exactly what collection representatives from California-based debt collection company, Rincon Debt Management, were asked to tell unassuming Americans each time they attempted to collect on back debts.

But based on a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission, often the debtor they were trying to pressure didn’t owe any money at all. In many cases either they had already paid back their debts or never had them to begin with. Unfortunately, some of these people were so afraid of the debt collector calls, they sent Rincon money anyway just to make these types of aggressive calls stop coming.…

Jobs in the private sector may be on the way up—a complete change of pace from the post-Recessionary years—but optimism about the mortgage industry is still way down in the wake of massive foreclosure abuses at major mortgage lenders.

In fact, The New York Times recently published a shocking article detailing the struggles of homeowners facing foreclosure framed by mortgage servicing horror stories piling up all across the nation.

According to the Times, dubious mortgage practices— widespread document execution fraud, misrepresenting fees, forgeries on signatures for your key mortgage documents, and making deceptive statements about efforts to correct paperwork—have become the norm, not the exception, for many a major mortgage lender from the West Coast to the East Coast.…

The big news recently seems to be rising unemployment, with jobs coming back into focus as yet another election season begins to heat up. But a recent jump in another bad economic bellwether—home foreclosures—is a new cause for concern in these uncertain economic times.

According to a latest reports, the number of mortgage-default notices filed by banks climbed 33 percent between July and August — the biggest single-month increase in four years, according to the data provider RealtyTrac.

As The Huffington Post put it, “Default notices are the first step in the foreclosure process, and the uptick in August may mean that lenders are beginning to clear the logjam that has held up home foreclosures since 2010.…

Remember when Labor Day used to mark the last three-day weekend for waning summer fun and frivolity?

Well fast forward to September 2011 when Labor Day weekend arrives on the heels of disheartening fiscal news that the American economy added no jobs during the month of August (you read that correctly: none, zero, zilch), signifying to financial commentators and economic experts alike that the slow and steady economic recovery appears to be furiously losing steam.

Add to these facts that consumer confidence recently dropped almost 15 points to the lowest level since April 2009, and you might gather that these combined economic impacts would affect the way that average people plan to spend one of season’s best (and brightest) holiday weekends.…

If you’re currently in bankruptcy or considering the benefits a bankruptcy can provide, you might be wondering about budget-conscious ways to truly get-away this summer, without, that is, wearing a complete hole in your wallet. But with gas prices on the rise and high unemployment holding steady, the prospects of seasonal vacation may not seem possible.

Nevetheless, while expenditures on luxuries are not recommended for the bankruptcy-bound, there are some financially-friendly ways to take a trip without “breaking the bank,” including the best places to go, the best ways to get there, and the top ways to make the most of limited budgets.…

While many are led to believe that filing for bankruptcy can kill your credit score, it turns out missing a single mortgage payment—a common symptom of recent economic malaise—may be just as deadly to your credit’s near future.

According to a recent article from The New York Times, “Missed mortgage payments, serious loan delinquencies, loan modifications, short sales, foreclosures and bankruptcies all drag down credit scores. Because a mortgage is such a big slice of anyone’s credit profile, it carries more weight than other loans. Both FICO and VantageScore have studied and quantified those impacts. They reached similar conclusions: for people with near-perfect records, a single mortgage payment that’s 30 days late reduces a credit score enough to hurt.…

In 2010, the President Obama reworked his $75 billion foreclosure prevention plan. The second incarnation of the Home Affordable Modification Program (or HAMP) added new incentives to help those hardest hit by the housing crisis, targeting homeowners who were unemployed or underwater in their mortgages (i.e., folks owing more on their loans than their homes were worth).

Unfortunately, shortly after this revamp of a program meant to stymy the real estate reckoning, data revealed that more than twice as many homeowners were kicked out of HAMP as were granted permanent relief. HAMP was further criticized in the beginnings of 2011 following a sharp drop in the amount of loan modifications that were processed through the program at the end of 2010 and the power shift in Washington following November’s elections, ushering in even more Republican scrutiny of the President’s economic policies.…

More bad news for those facing tough financial times: mortgage foreclosures are likely to top the one million mark in 2010. As The Associated Press reported in the last week, “Nearly 528,000 homes were taken over by lenders in the first six months of the year, a rate that is on track to eclipse the more than 900,000 homes repossessed in 2009, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service.”

By comparison, according to RealtyTrac, in an average year the United States only sees about 100,000 homes in foreclosure. So, with the country on track to face ten times that amount of foreclosures this year, with 1.7 million U.S.…

Life after bankruptcy can be a challenge. It will take commitment, a new mindset and an entirely fresh set of budgeting habits.

People are surprised to find that when they look around, there really are countless ways for you to save, establish credit and rebuild the economic life you once had.

For a some filers, bankruptcy meant giving up a car payment you could no longer afford. With the new change, getting around town to run errands or schedule job interviews can be pretty frustrating. However, alternative modes of transportation are becoming more abundant. One example is the WeCar program, an idea already popular in larger cities and on college campuses.…

If you’ve ever tuned in to reality television shows like “Operation Repo,” or the like, you may see repo men (and women) as a bloodthirsty lot, who’ll stop at nothing and use any means necessary to take back cars and trucks, and even boats and planes. In recent episodes, it’s common to see delinquent debtors of all walks of life confronted, assaulted, and even pepper sprayed in an effort to repossess their past due property. While it might be argued that there’s more fiction this fact in these terse depictions of confrontational repossessions, it’s still a good idea to be prepared when repo men may come calling.…

News just moved from bad to worse for many homeowners seeking shelter under the Obama Administration’s Home Affordability Modification Program (otherwise known as HAMP).

Recent government figures show that the average beneficiary of the administration’s flagship homeowner-assistance program owes their mortgage lender more than $1.50 for every dollar their home is currently worth. As a result, many more homeowners than expected are underwater (owing more than their homes are valued), facing foreclosure and will likely be forced to walk away from their mortgages in the near future.

As The Huffington Post reports,  “A recent study by Federal Reserve economists shows that underwater homeowners are, not surprisingly, much more likely to default on their mortgages.…

If you’re considering bankruptcy, you may be wondering about the nuts and bolts of the bankruptcy process. One part of this process is the 341 meeting.  After filing your Chapter 13 or Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you are REQUIRED to attend a meeting of your creditors, otherwise known as a “341 meeting.” Named for section 341 of the bankruptcy code that mandates a meeting between a bankruptcy bound debtor and creditors, it normally occurs three to six weeks after your bankruptcy filing. If you fail to attend the 341, it may result in the dismissal of your case.

Purpose of the 341

Despite the fact that the 341 meeting is not attended by a judge, nor conducted in a courtroom, it is part of the bankruptcy legal process, meant to ensure that you openly and honestly represented your assets, debts, and disposable income in your bankruptcy petition.…

Only three months ago, the President Obama reworked his $75 billion foreclosure prevention plan. Part two of the Home Affordable Modification Program (or HAMP), put into play new incentives to help those hardest hit by the housing crisis, targeting homeowners who were unemployed or underwater in their mortgages (i.e., folks owing more on their loans than their homes are worth).

Unfortunately, a month later, data showed that more than twice as many homeowners were kicked out of HAMP as were granted permanent relief.

Now, The Huffington Post is reporting that “More than five times as many homeowners were kicked out of the Obama administration’s primary foreclosure-prevention program last month than were granted new relief, new data released Monday show[s].…

While those that analyze esoteric financial trends and market conditions seem to think that the recession is easing, a large portion of the country aren’t so quick to agree. With foreclosures still prevalent and personal bankruptcies at a level close to that of 2005’s pre-code change flood, there are plenty of reasons for Americans to still be on edge about their finances.

A recent survey by the Associated Press and its polling partner Gfk indicated that 46 percent of families are still not confident in the status of their economic situation.

The sense of financial stability in the country can be compared to the local weather forecast.…

Are you struggling to stay current with mounting mortgage costs or finding yourself already in arrears? Well, you’re not alone.  According to a recent Reuters article by Lynn Adler, a staggering one in seven households were behind on mortgage payments or is in foreclosure in the first quarter of 2010.  And while the rate of new foreclosures has slowed, the sheer number of delinquencies and foreclosure actions still occurring, some two years following the beginning of the recession, is a clear sign that the U.S. housing market remains on a rocky foundation.

This first quarter data from the Mortgage Bankers Association also shows that the nation’s foreclosures rate rose to 4.63 percent, up from 4.58 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009—almost a point higher than the foreclosure rate this time last year (3.85 percent).…

In the last ten years, self-storage centers have infiltrated America faster than a bad singer on YouTube. From basic storage sheds with individual bays to climate-controlled multi-story complexes, we have become a nation obsessed with storage. Heck, you can even invest in a garage condo today.

Now, let’s juxtapose our need for storage with the general financial position of so many American families right now. There is really no more proof of our collective love of useless consumer products than the need to pay $100 month just to store it.

And if it’s not in a storage facility, it’s pushing the car out of the garage.…

In the new HBO series Treme, viewers follow the lives of New Orleans residents a mere three months following the physical, emotional and economic devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The cast of characters represents a cross-section of ordinary New Orleanians—from police to piano players—trying to rebuild their lives, their homes and their unique culture in the aftermath of the 2005 storm. Like a bellwether for our nation’s tough financial times, Treme captures the proverbial “perfect storm” that led to one city’s economic fallout, full of stark imagery of people losing everything and attempting to rise from the ashes in any way they can.…

While millions of struggling Americans still working hard to find meaningful employment might disagree, economists are heartened about prospects for growth this year as industries increasingly report better profits and add new jobs, though they still expect the recovery to remain slow, a new survey shows.

As The Huffington Post reported this week, 70% of those recently surveyed by The National Association for Business Economics believe real Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—the measure of our country’s overall economic output— will “grow by more than two percent this year, up from 61 percent who said the same in January. Twenty-four percent are predicting real GDP will grow by more than 3 percent in 2010, up from 14 percent earlier this year.…

In these tough economic times, many families are facing unprecedented financial challenges. This country’s recent Great Recession has dealt, and continues to deal, a significant blow to the budgets of Americans—leaving millions in debt, underwater in their mortgages, perpetually jobless and looking for any means necessary to get back on a financially-healthy track. As a result of this economy, many need loans and are unable to get them without the financial support of a co-signor.

In part one of the series, “The Responsibility of Co-signors in Default and Bankruptcy,” we’ll look at why it’s better to be cautious than to co-sign.…

While many economists say this decade’s Great Recession ended in the middle of 2009, millions of struggling Americans still working hard to find meaningful employment would definitely disagree…and now, the figures do too.

According to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report, more than 40% of the nation’s 14.9 million unemployed workers have been out of a job for at least 27 weeks, with an average member of this beleaguered club having been unemployed for 29.7 weeks. For those keeping count, that’s nearly seven months.

And with each passing month, it becomes more and more clear that finding new jobs isn’t getting any easier, with leading economists speculating that not only is the nearly 10% unemployment rate not likely to fall anytime soon, but also that the actual number of workers seeking full-time jobs is on par to grow.…