Weekly Round Up – January 03, 2014

Before we get to the good reads!

Check out this beastly resource on Innovative Internet Marketing Ideas, and let me know what you think.

A Few Good Reads

Here are a few of my favorite reads from the past week.

1. Mortgage rise will plunge a million homeowners into ‘perilous debt’:

More than a million homeowners will be at risk of defaulting on their mortgages and losing their properties in the wake of even a small rise in interest rates, a bombshell analysis reveals. Borrowers who have failed to pay down their mortgages when interest rates have been at record low levels now face being overwhelmed by “perilous levels of debt” when the inevitable hike comes.

Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, warned of a “financial ticking timebomb”: “The rising cost of energy, food and travel has been absorbing any spare income people may have. This means that in some cases there is little or nothing left to cope with larger mortgage repayments.” Open this article

2. Three Steps for Dealing with Overwhelming Debt:

So many people today graduate from college with extensive student loans and consumer debt on top of that. They struggle to find a job and, sometimes, they never find the job that they want. Sometimes, people get married. Sometimes, people buy a home and get themselves into a giant mortgage. One day–often in a person’s mid- to late twenties–they wake up and take an assessment of their life and all they see for the foreseeable future is crippling debt.

It’s not uncommon to see people in their twenties and thirties owing several times their annual salary. When you’re making $30,000 a year, $80,000 in student loans along with some credit card debt and maybe even a mortgage seems like a mountain that you will never be able to climb. Open this article

3. Evictions soar in line with debt levels:

Court-ordered evictions in Norway have doubled since the finance crisis hit in 2008, and never before have authorities handled so many forced sales of property. There’s also been an alarming rise in the number of elderly Norwegians who can’t pay their bills.

Even though Norway’s economy remains strong in relation to other countries, new statistics suggest that many Norwegians have been living beyond their means. Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported recently that the public agency responsible for enforcing court orders (Namsfogden) has carried out more than 4,200 evictions in Oslo alone this year, 92 per cent of them because of unpaid rent. The number of persons faced with court-ordered deductions from their paychecks, to cover unpaid debt, has doubled during the past six years. Open this article

4. 10 States With the Highest Student Loan Debt:

The average student loan debt in the U.S. is just shy of $30,000, but several states have already passed that milestone.

A report from the Institute for College Access & Success studied the debt loads of 2012 college graduates and found six states whose average student borrower carried more than $29,400 in education loans, which is the national average.

The state-by-state breakdown did not include student debt statistics from for-profit colleges, as many did not report such data, despite having a high concentration of borrowers among their students. Open this article

5. Student Loans – Students Up To Their Eyeballs In Debt Can Find Relief:

Student loan debt is mounting and although earning a degree can promise a better career after graduation – the debt can be stressful to those saddled with huge loans.

Today, nearly 40 million Americans are burdened with $1.2 trillion in student loan debt, according to CBS News

Don’t go and default on these loans just because you are over your head. You could be eligible for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). Open this article