by Candice Choi

NEW YORK (AP)—You can still get credit if your finances are a mess. It will just cost dearly.

A sweeping credit card law that takes effect Monday was supposed to prevent banks from employing tactics that yanked borrowers deeper into debt. Yet an array of loans and cards with crushing terms still beckons from every corner.

Consider a subprime credit card that now comes with a 59.9 percent interest rate. There are also payday loans and prepaid cards, both of which can come at steep costs.

by Stephen D. Riley

(NNPA)—There were no tennis shoes, jeans or sweatshirts present at the Minority Business Summit’s “Men of Influence” luncheon Feb. 20, just neatly creased slacks, fashionable ties and double-breasted suits. But the only thing sharper than the dress code may have been the entertaining and sharp dialogue among the event’s guests. Inside the Billie Holiday Ballroom at the Baltimore Hilton Hotel, some of the most prominent figures in minority business gathered at one of the area’s premiere annual business conferences.

There’s no place like “your” home! Less than 2 percent of Americans actually own their homes independent of a mortgage. Meaning 98 percent of Americans have a “limited” vested interest in their property, sharing ownership rights with the mortgage company. This boils down to one startling statistic. Either your housing payments are being used to pay down “your mortgage”—if you are a homeowner. Or your housing payments are being used to pay down someone “else’s mortgage”—if you are a renter. Given the fact that shelter is one of the basic necessities of life it stands to reason that many of us will have either a long-term or permanent housing expense. One tax strategy that many financial savvy people employ is to convert non-deductible interest expense to deductible interest expense. Housing expenses as a renter are non-deductible whereas housing expenses as a homeowner are deductible. Translation—seek homeownership over renting. It’s the taxable thing to do.

by Charlene Crowell

(NNPA)—At a time when the source of so much consumer angst is focused on the ill effects of consumer lending, it was both fitting and appropriate for the 2010 theme of Black History Month to be economic empowerment. The theme, as in previous years, was identified by the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, the organization that provides ongoing service to the vision and works that Dr. Carter G. Woodson first began in 1926.