Personal Finance and Money Management

With the U.S. unemployment rate currently hovering around 9.5%, there is still debate on whether to extend unemployment benefits once again. Under normal conditions, states would provide up to 26 weeks of unemployment insurance coverage for workers. Due to the recession, federal law had allowed an extension up to 99 weeks, depending on the rate in individual states. The extension expired in June, and Congress has failed to pass an additional extension. This means that those who exhaust the regular state benefits after June will not have the extension. There is controversy over how to fund the extension, and whether or not it is effective in aiding the economic recovery.

The majority of Congress was in favor of the recent bill extending unemployment benefits through November.

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Consumer credit declines in May.
Consumers across America are slowly paying off their debt, continuing a trend has been exhibited in 18 of the last 20 months.

According to the latest report from the Federal Reserve [Board], the amount of money consumers owe to creditors declined at an annualized rate of 4.5 percent in May. That number equates to a drop of about $9.15 billion in consumer debt. The new national number for total consumer debt is $2.42 trillion. This was the fourth month in a row that consumer credit declined. There was an even sharper decline the previous month, when consumer debt fell $14.86 billion.

The drop in consumer credit was driven by a deep decline in revolving credit, which is typically associated with credit card payments. Full Article