Posts Tagged ‘credit card debt’

A Grand Jury in Suffolk County, Mass. yesterday returned indictments against the president of a collection agency for purportedly stealing millions of dollars worth of excise taxes from the City of Boston.

Stephen Colahan, of Beverly, Mass. is charged with Larceny over $250 by Continuous Scheme and Procurement Fraud. Prosecutors assert that Colahan, over the course of five years, moved more than $2.7 million from a City of Boston bank account to his own companys account.

According to a press release from the Massachusetts Attorney General, from 1995 until June 2007 Colahans company, Walker Associates, Inc., was under contract with the City of Boston to collect delinquent motor vehicle excise taxes from Boston residents. Under the terms of the agreement, Walker was required to pay over to the city 100 percent of the taxes and statutory fees collected; the city would then pay Walker Associates a percentage of the fees the company had collected. Each week, Walker Associates was required to pay over to the city the amount of the previous weeks cash payments and cleared checks, and to provide a paper and electronic report detailing the amounts collected from each taxpayer and the date of collection.

Beginning in June 2001, Colahan allegedly began taking money out of the bank account into which his company deposited all of the citys tax and fee collections, and using that money to cover Walkers business expenses. Authorities allege that for the next five years, Colahan repeatedly stole from the citys account. From June 2001 through August 2006, authorities allege that Colahan transferred over $2.7 million to his own company account.

In October 2007, the states attorney generals office began an inquisition after the matter had been referred by the Boston Police Department and the City of Boston.

A Suffolk Grand Jury returned indictments against Colahan Tuesday. He is schedules for arraignment on May 12, 2009, in Suffolk Superior Court.

Decide now to get rid of your credit card debt. Why now? This is because prolonging it only will cost you more money in the long term. Count all the money you spare each month for your credit card payments. Just think about what you could probably spend with this money if you were not paying the bills with the credit card company.

After convincing yourself, the first step in this very arduous process is to come up with a written plan for systematically reducing your debt. Get rid of all of your existing cards except one to avoid the temptation. Using them accumulates even more debt and more problems for you. Cut up the rest of the cards or put them in a place where you cannot have access for now.

Pay much more than the minimum every due date. You should be very reluctant in paying only the minimum on your credit cards because this only benefits the credit card company in the long run. After all, if you can’t manage to pay for more than the minimum balance every time, it is a strong indication that you are spending on something you can’t afford in the first place. By paying more than the minimum, you reduce how much you pay for interests every time. In addition, you deduct the principal thereby gradually turning the balance down. Following this process continuously will make you debt-free much sooner than paying only the minimum.

One method to get out of debt faster is by avoiding the card with the highest interest rates and transferring the balance to a card with a better rate. After the balance transfer, focus all your energy by paying off that card as soon as you can.

As an advice, you can also try talking with your credit card lenders. Ask for any hardship terms they can offer with you. Some larger credit card lenders have programs which help cardholders pay off their accounts at a much reduced rate. Just ask for those deals because they don’t promote it very willingly at times. Just make a good record by adhering to the terms closely because these schemes are strict. In most cases, if you make one missed payment, they will drop you off the program and all interest and fees will carry on the account.

By now, you are pretty convinced and will soon be making the decision to deal with your credit card debt finally. Working towards your goals consistently, you will definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel in due time.

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Turning your finances around is a logical game. It is very workable only with some great effort from the part of the debtor. Most importantly, paying off your debt should be a hard learning process for every one who undergoes the process. By undergoing the emotional ride of paying for a debt, you try your best next time to avoid committing the same financial pitfall.

In today’s recession, getting rid of debt should be dream for you. Take the time to think if you were not devoting a sizable chunk of your budget for the debt payments. What will you probably are doing with the extra money if you don’t have a debt? What will you probably do with the extra time if you don’t have that part time work to pay off those bills?

Paying the repayment with the interests can kill our peace of mind. We all hope that those debts will just go away. But the credit card companies will never stop calling you until you get paid. But what had been the problem why this occurred?

Spending for the next designer’s clothes seems logical. It is expensive but it is your stress reliever. After a long week of tiring work, you need some therapeutic shopping. After a month, you are being chased by your bills. Is that the true stress reliever?

Spending, like a lot of things in life, should be moderated. When you have a monthly income of $1,000 a month, how logical is spending $1,200 for that month? But most of us fall trap with this mistake. It’s easier right now to spend with your credit cards. But paying them is another story.

That’s where the bad news comes in. You need the ultimate discipline to protect yourself from spending haphazardly with your credit cards. If you can’t use it wisely, you have to better ditch it off. Buy only the vital things you need with cash or a debit card. I’ll emphasize again that you need to buy the things that you only need, not the things that you want.

Use the strict regimen of “buy as needed” until you have reduced a large portion of your debt. Keep monitoring through a list all the bills you pay. Eliminate the things that you do not necessarily need like that gym membership you really don’t attend to or that pricey cable TV package.

By keeping it up with the effort to revolutionize your spending habits in your pursuit for a debt-free life, you will soon be rewarded with the life without the hassles from debt paying. Only by having the relief of living a life debt-free, will you get more out of life.

Check out more details on how to pay off credit card debt fast here in this Dollar Guides official site.

Getting rid of debt, especially with credit cards, is simpler than you think. It only requires a bit of discipline from your end.

The first step in getting started with eliminating debts is simply avoiding debt totally. This requires you to stop any new spending using your credit cards and, most importantly, finding yourself getting over that impulse to purchase unnecessary objects to end up collecting dusts in your closet.

This takes us to the next step to examine all of your past and current spending. Getting over that impulse might be easily said than done but it starts somewhere to finally realize that spending with a purpose is practically more important than your shopping spree every now and then.

Find out by the numbers how much money you can set aside towards paying off your credit cards if you become conscious with your purchases. Then, when all is done, it is time to finally start paying off that debt.

Credit card companies generally offer minimum payments ranging from 2 - 2.5% of the current outstanding balance. With the current balance of $1,000, you can simply pay a minimum payment of $20 - $25 for the month. Seems pretty convenient and easy, right?

Let’s break it down to the details. Your $25 minimum payment goes mostly to the interest on the balance. The tiny amount left after then interest will go to pay off the actual balance. That is if it is still significant enough to really deduct something to your balance.

After doing this for a few months, check back on your statements. The minimum payments will probably take you, in the example of $1000 balance, about 50 months or so to pay off that balance. That’s over four years of paying a $1000 balance. In details, you pay a sizeable amount in interests alone giving a huge profit for the bank. Now, is it still convenient and easy?

This only concludes that paying the minimum is not the right place where you want to start if you want to get debt free soon.

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