Staff Writer
Bill Fay
Bill “No Pay” Fay has lived a meager financial existence his entire life. He started writing/bragging about it in 2012, helping birth Debt.org into existence as the site’s original “Frugal Man.” Prior to that, he spent more than 30 years covering the high finance world of college and professional sports for major publications, including the Associated Press, New York Times and Sports Illustrated. His interest in sports has waned some, but he is as passionate as ever about not reaching for his wallet. Bill can be reached at [email protected].
Debt settlement and debt consolidation share a common goal – help consumers find a way out of credit card debt – but take very different routes to achieve that goal.…
A Pell Grant is the gold-plated financial award at colleges and universities for a lot of reasons, the most obvious one being it is money for tuition, room and board that doesn’t…
What Are Personal Loans? Most personal loans lack collateral – property that can be taken if the borrower defaults – so they rely on the integrity of the borrower to…
The best way to avoid debt is to be proactive about managing your money. Avoiding debt requires you to establish a sound financial plan and steer clear of the foolish…
Being upside down on a car loan happens when you owe more than the vehicle is worth. In other words, you have negative equity. Upside-down loans are almost inevitable –…
Bankruptcy is often thought of as an embarrassing last resort, a duck-and-cover protection against chunks of falling sky. But it’s more helpful to think of bankruptcy as a legal tool…
A debt lawyer is someone with the knowledge, credentials and skill to help consumers struggling with debt sort through their financial troubles. Representing clients in cases against debt collectors is a…
Tens of millions of Americans struggle with a mountain of student loan debt and each year huge numbers simply stop making payments and end up in default. That is a…
Budgeting has a bad reputation among a lot of America households who view it as a way to strip all the fun out of spending money. No more shopping. No…
The one thing that keeps most Americans up at night is not a lumpy mattress or getting chased by a naked Woody Harrelson in a dream. It’s the Big D…
After providing an endless supply of loan opportunities to help students solve the problem of paying for a college education, the federal government was faced with the obvious follow up:…
The Rule of 78 is a financing method that allocates pre-calculated interest charges that favor the lender over the borrower on short-term loans. This financing practice is highly controversial and in…
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was created in 2007 to offer federal student loan borrowers an incentive to choose careers in government, public service and nonprofits. And with that…
TOTAL U.S. STUDENT DEBT $0 Trillion STUDENT DEBT ACCRUED EVERY SECOND $0 AVERAGE STUDENT DEBT 2017 $0 Financial Aid & Student Loans The average college tuition cost ranges from $9,410…
Friends, family, and financial institutions may have more in common than you think. According to the Census Bureau’s 2022 Household Pulse Survey, over 25 million consumers had to lean on…
Debt Relief Programs in Texas If you need debt relief options to help with credit card debt, there are many choices in Texas. Credit counseling agencies (nonprofit and for-profit), banks,…
Debt Relief Programs in California California led the nation in Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings in the first quarter of 2022, so there are a lot of people there who could…
Are you aware of how much money colleges and universities give away with grants and scholarships? A lot more than you think! The College Board Trends in Financial Aid says…
The steps needed to pay for graduate school are not a whole lot different than the ones taken to get a bachelor’s degree – fill out the FAFSA form, investigate…
There was a time when no two words were more closely associated with each other than “65” and “retired.” The two were a couple for so long they were interchangeable.…
With a nod to Mark Twain, inflation has replaced the weather as the thing everyone talks about it, but nobody seems to do anything about it. Until now. Not that…
America has turned into a nation of quitters, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Spurred by the COVID pandemic, millions of people have joined “The Great Resignation” that’s happening…
The rules governing repayment of federal student loans contain so many nooks and crannies that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you may have missed one created during the…
The average Joe – not Biden – figures to benefit most from passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Approximately 145 million Americans will receive a third round of…
Biden wants the minimum wage – currently set at $7.25 an hour – to jump to $15 an hour by 2025. The increases would be phased in at approximately $1.75…
President-elect Joe Biden unveiled the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion war on the prolonged suffering of Americans hardest hit by coronavirus. Included in his proposal: a fresh round of…
The second COVID-19 relief bill is now law – all 3,126 pages of it. The people in Congress who passed it admit they don’t know what all is in it,…
If you haven’t looked at your bank account this week, now might be a splendid time. The long wait for a second stimulus check from the U.S. government finally is…
A second stimulus check – the financial gift from the U.S. government to help consumers recover from the economic belt coronavirus gave the American economy – needs only a signature…
If the biggest employee benefit you receive is when your company bothers to fill the toilet paper rolls in the employee bathroom, you might not want to read this: Google…
If you are paying on a federal student loan, you probably already know that the government CARES Act has provided benefits that suspends payment and interest requirements through May 1,…
Americans with student loan debt have a $1.6 trillion question on their minds: What would President Trump or a President Biden do about all that money these 45 million borrowers…
There hasn’t been much good economic news in 2020, but if you’re buried in student loans, there was an astoundingly positive development recently. Thanks to a recent court ruling, you…
The COVID-19 pandemic has created record unemployment, erased profit margins, closed businesses and wreaked havoc on almost every family’s money outlook. It has even affected America’s ultimate get-out-of-jail financial symbol…
Veterans indebted to the Department of Veterans Affairs won a partial payment reprieve this summer that will last at least through the end of 2020. The VA action extends a…
Dorothy surely wasn’t thinking of life in a COVID-19 pandemic when she clicked those heels in the “Wizard of Oz” and opined that ‘there’s no place like home.’ But her…
Congress and the White House are still debating whether the HEALS Act, HEROES Act – or some compromise Act in between – will deliver the next round of coronavirus relief…
When the House of Representative passed the $3-trillion HEROES Act on May 15, it all but guaranteed that a second stimulus check would arrive for Americans in need of financial help…
The storm is coming. American consumers will be filing personal bankruptcies in record numbers by the end of 2020. That is the projection from bankruptcy attorneys, bankers and other experts…
The phrase “stimulus check” is second only to “coronavirus” or “COVID-19” as something to talk about these days and people are definitely talking. About 159 million Americans have received the…