Personal Finance and Money Management

Many consumers expecting a refund are anxious to get it considered in the state of soon as possible. That makes them vulnerable to promises of quick tax refunds. They may need the money to pay rent or make immediate debt payments. Often what happens is that consumers lose a large part of the refund to interest and fees.

Called Refund Anticipation Loans (RAL), these loans are usually not good loans to accept. As reported by the Consumer Federation of America, 8.4 million taxpayers paid millions of dollars to companies offering RALs. They also paid $738 million in loan fees. There was another $68 million paid in other fees.

It is hard to believe that so much money was paid in fees to get tax refunds that could be obliged been processed in less than two weeks by the IRS.

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There is some hope still for homeowners wondering if there will be more foreclosure statistics in 2010. The federal government is working on a plan that will hopefully make it easier for people to qualify for the Making Home Affordable program. The government is also trying to find a way to convince banks to write off some or all of the difference between an underwater home’s mortgage balance and its market value.

The write-off discussions are actually addressing the more complex issues. Banks are unwilling to write opposite portions of mortgage balances because large write-offs would have to exist absorbed financially. The government cannot force the banks to take . t

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Consumers have been under attack economically for a year and a half due to the impact of the recession, and now a new front is forming. The US government recently issued a report that showed consumer wages are being outpaced by inflation.

As unemployment continues to remain at 10 percent, it has become doubtful whether consumer spending will subsist able to play any significant role in propelling the economy out of the recession. With inflation making its debut after a period of declining prices, it becomes even much less likely that spending can drive an economic recovery.

Though prices are rising only at a moderate rate, consumer wages still fell 1.6 percent in 2009 when inflation adjusted.

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When the Haiti earthquake occurred several weeks ago, there were pleas for turn into money donations. In an effort to help, companies offered to collect donations from customers and pass them on the relief organizations   Emerging from this situation is the text donation.

Texting donations have been done in the past but not one the scale seen for Haiti. The power of social networking was made clear as millions of dollars were charged against consumer accounts and each one generated by a text message. There were no checks to write or websites that had to be accessed. All a person had to do was text designated words to a numbered code using a cell phone. <

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Consumer wages are stagnant and will probably stay that way for a while. That was the verdict of the U.S. Labor Department. The Labor Department evaluated the average hourly earnings of non-supervisory and production workers in the private sector and found that wages are not moving much right now with only 3 cents an hour added in December compared to November 2009.

Hourly earnings have only gone up by 2.2 percent over the last year. This means consumers have actually lost ground because the Consumer Price Index for November 2008 to November 2009 rose 2.3 percent.

The Labor Department also looked at average weekly wages and found the same stagnation.

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