by Jennifer Liberto
The U.S. Postal Service must deliver the mail six days a week, said Congress’ watchdog arm in a Thursday legal opinion.
The legal opinion from the nonpartisan agency throws new questions on the Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe’s plans to stop delivering first-class mail, but keep delivering packages and express mail on Saturdays.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office stopped short of saying the U.S. Postal Service’s August plan to end most Saturday mail service violates current law.
The U.S. Postal Service says it’s not ending six-day delivery, only changing it, since it’ll still deliver packages on Saturdays.
However, GAO’s report could make it easier to file a lawsuit to stop the U.S. Postal Service, if it decides to continue with service cuts as previously announced.
“We fully expect the Postal Service’s board of governors and the postmaster general to follow the law and the expressed will of Congress about maintaining six-day delivery,” said Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers. “We do not expect to have a legal fight.”
When the U.S. Postal Service announced last month it planned to stop delivering and collecting letters and other first-class mail on Saturdays beginning Aug. 5, several lawmakers accused the agency of overstepping its legal authority.
“The GAO legal opinion clearly rejects the Postal Service’s attempt to circumvent the law,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia who asked GAO to review postal service’s legal authority.
In the past, the agency had said it needed Congress to change current law to cut Saturday
service. After more than two years of waiting for Congress to help, the Postal Service decided to cut Saturday mail, saying the current temporary funding measures gave them a loophole to pursue the changes.
The GAO report said that loophole isn’t there and that current law requires the agency to continue 6-day delivery.
U.S. Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said the agency disagrees with the GAO opinion. He also said it doesn’t address their plan to move to “5-day mail delivery, with 6-day package delivery, during the week of August 5.”
That plan would save $2 billion a year, not much compared to the $16 billion loss the organization reported for 2012.
The key culprit for the Postal Service’s woes has been a 2006 congressional mandate, under which it has to pre-fund healthcare benefits for future retirees. The USPS has been borrowing billions of dollars from taxpayers to make up for the shortfalls.
At the same time, technological advances have led to a decline in first-class mail, which most consumers use to pay bills and stay in touch.
The situation turned particularly dire last year—the agency twice defaulted on payments totaling $11 billion, and it exhausted a $15 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury.

CHARLENE CROWELL

(NNPA)—In today’s challenging financial times, the cost of living finds many consumers with an ongoing financial challenge to hold on until their next payday arrives. Even worse, when banks peddle predatory payday loans, they pose serious threats to their customers’ financial well-being. Marketed under names such as “direct deposit advance,” these loans are easy to get; but hard to pay off. As consumers get ensnared by the debt trap, banks reap repeating cycles of quick cash.
In its latest report on bank payday lending, the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) found that although participating banks claim that their payday loan products are only for short-term emergencies and carry marginal risks, the real-life experiences were the opposite. In fact, the typical bank payday borrower:
•Is charged an annual percentage rate (APR) that averages 225 to 300 percent;
•Took out 19 loans in 2011, spending at least part of six months a year in bank payday debt; and
•Is twice as likely to incur overdraft fees than bank customers as a whole.
In addition, more than one in four bank payday borrowers is a Social Security recipient. This comes on the heels of a key administrative change for seniors on Social Security. As of March 1, all Social Security payments are issued electronically. And although seniors have specific protections from payday lending on prepaid cards, no comparable protection exists on checking accounts.

CRL’s report also calls for regulators to take immediate actions to stop banks offering payday loans from engaging in this form of predatory lending. Additionally, CRL calls for the following terms on small loan products:
•A minimum loan term of 90 days with affordable installments;
•An APR of 36 percent or less;
•Underwriting based on an ability to repay; and
•No mandatory automatic repayment from the consumer’s checking account.
More than a year ago, 250 organizations and individuals sent a letter to federal banking regulators expressing concerns about bank payday lending. Last year, in a separate action, more than 1,000 consumers and organizations told the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about elder financial abuse, including bank payday lending.
At that time, CRL advised, “More than 13 million older adults are considered economically insecure, living on $21,800 a year or less. Senior women in particular face diminished incomes because of lower lifetime earnings and therefore lower Social Security and pension benefits.”
As opposition to bank payday and elder financial abuse grows, banking regulators are continuing to hear from advocates, experts and concerned citizens. Fortunately, advocates are determined to press this issue in growing numbers. In a letter dated March 13, for example, 278 organizations and individuals signed a second letter to regulators.
The letter states, “Payday lending has a particularly adverse impact on African-Americans and Latinos, as a disproportionate share of payday borrowers come from communities of color. High-cost, short-term balloon repayments, and the consequent series of repeat loans, have long been identified by regulators as features of predatory lending.
“Ultimately, payday loans erode the assets of bank customers, and rather than promote savings, make checking accounts unsafe for many customers. They lead to uncollected debt, bank account closures, and greater numbers of unbanked Americans. All of these outcomes are inconsistent with both consumer protection and the safety and soundness of financial institutions.”
The limitation of space will not allow for the listing of all 278 signatories. But they include many national and statewide organizations, including AARP, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Black Leadership Forum, NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and CRL.
The coalition warns, “Please move quickly to ensure that payday lending by banks does not become more widespread and to ensure that those banks currently making payday loans stop offering this inherently dangerous product.”
(Charlene Crowell is a communications manager with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at: Charlene.crowell@re­sponsible­lending.org)

KEITH B. KEY

PITTSBURGH, Pa.—The African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania has announced that Keith B. Key, president and CEO of KBK Enterprises has joined the Chamber’s Presidential Roundtable, as the first African-American member. Key, a prominent real estate developer, is a native of Pittsburgh, and heads one of the nation’s largest African-American owned real estate development firms. KBK Enterprises is active in cities throughout the nation including Pittsburgh, Ohio, Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago and New Orleans. KBK Enterprises was selected as developer of Addison Terrace, a former public housing community in the center of Pittsburgh’s Hill District. The $130 million dollar award is the largest to a minority enterprise in the history of Pittsburgh. KBK’s previous largest project award of $80 Million was Garfield Commons in Pittsburgh, a community where he was raised. KBK has over $500 million in current activities under contract. Key is also chairman of the Board and Director of the KBK Foundation, a charitable non-profit located in Ohio.  
The Chamber’s Presidential Roundtable is composed of 16 top executives in the business and academic communities in our region. The creation of the Presidential Roundtable in 1998 was the result of the Chamber’s need to develop corporate links for relationship building to grow the organization. Former Chairman Robert Agbede, Chester Engineers, Inc.; Thomas Usher, former Chairman of USX Corporation; and Richard Simmons, Chairman Emeritus of Allegheny Teledyne initiated the effort to encourage chief executive officers in the business and academic areas in Western Pennsylvania to commit to being an executive member of the Chamber, and to encourage their buyers and procurement officers to work with the Chamber to identify minority firms for purchasing goods and services. Keith Key has been a member of the Chamber since 2006, and becomes the first African-American to belong to the Chamber’s Presidential Roundtable.
Today the African American Chamber of Commerce of Western Pennsylvania has over 500 members and supporters, and is ranked the 11th largest Chamber in the region. The mission of the Chamber is to continuously improve business and professional opportunities for African-American business owners and professionals.

DAMON CARR

I have noticed a trend in my business. I get tons of emails, phone calls and comments from people who say things like, “Damon, I know a lot of people who can use your help.” Damon, my mother, my father, my grandparents, my cousin, my friend, my coworker, or this person at my church can use your help.
Notice how several people are saying that somebody else can use my help—NEVER THEMSELVES! In the past, I would thank them for referring the person whom they believe needed my help and move on.  Lately, I received phone calls, emails and comments from people seeking help for others and not themselves with so much repetition that it forced me to reflect on this matter. You know what—I became offended for the sake of my clients and myself. I thought to myself, what arrogance—these people think that they are above the advice that I give.  They think that I’m not qualified to help them improve their financial situation.  To add insult to injury, they think that my clients are either rejects or are simply terrible at managing their money.  All of this is HOGWASH!  As a result, I thought it was time to be adamantly clear as to whom I’m talking to!
If you’re reading this column—I’m talking to YOU! Not the person next to you, I’m talking to YOU! Yeah—YOU! I could care less about your current financial picture. I don’t care if you make $5- thousand or $5-million dollars per year, I’m talking to YOU!
When I say that Wall Street Journal did a study and they revealed that 70 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, I want YOU to understand YOU were not exempt from that statistic. When I say that the Department of Health and Human Services did a study and they say that 96 percent of people age 65 and older retire or die BROKE, that includes YOU!
Remember the swift or the strong will not win the race. The one who can endure to the end will win the race.  You have a 96 percent probability that you will not endure to the end—unless, you’re ok with ending up BROKE in your golden years.  You thought the various companies and government organizations were being nice to senior citizens by offering senior citizen discounts because it’s a nice thing to do.  Nope! These organizations are offering senior citizens discounts because senior citizens are BROKE!  Ask the elderly people you know, “what would they do differently if they could do it all over again?” Two answers will be common. They’ll wish they spent more time with family and friends and they’ll wish they had a better financial game plan.

If you believe that you’re exempt from the information contained in my column, consider this—Magic Johnson never thought he would get HIV. Christopher Reeves (Superman) thought he would leave us with a vision of him flying.  I can’t shake the image of him in the wheelchair.  The clients that I serve are not rejects. They are not people who woke up one day and decided I’m going to go deeply into to debt, not pay my bills and create a mess.  My clients are no different from you. My clients are Managers, CEO’s, Doctors, Lawyers, Nurses, Teachers, Pastors, Administrative Assistants, and Professors. I also work with Janitors, Parking Attendants, Policemen, and everything in between.  Most of my clients come to me struggling because LIFE happened without a warning and without a plan.  They did not expect to lose their job. They did not expect their spouse to die. They did not expect to come down with a certain illness or disability.  They did not expect to go through a divorce. They did not expect their business to fail.  
I have one client who is a hard worker and makes good money—I mean GOOD MONEY.  An unfortunate part of making a good living is that your family and friends seek you out to bail them out.  Being the giving person that she is, she gave and she gave some more.  She did not realize that every gift was a sacrifice to her own financial well being. She did not realize that in this case she was not helping with her monetary donations. She was in fact enabling her family and friends to continue their bad behavior. Life happened to my client.  She was involved in two car accidents within 3-months.  One of which was near fatal.  In between the two car accidents, she lost a parent whom she was extremely close with.  Her world came tumbling down. The people whom she thought she was helping but in fact was enabling were unable to come to her rescue.  Being that she gave without a proper financial foundation to give from, she had no contingency plans in place to bail her out.  I’m happy to report, she’s back on her feet and she is seeing incremental progress.
As Zig Zigler says, “Success is not measured by what you do in comparison to someone else.  Success is measured by what you do in comparison to what you have the potential to do.” No body plans to fail, they just fail to plan.  Do you have a plan in place for when LIFE happens to you?  I did not say if.  I said WHEN.  Money magazine reports that every family will experience a major financial set back within any 10-year period.  Jim Rohn says that you are either in a crisis, walking away from a crisis or walking toward a crisis. A solid financial plan will turn your crisis into an inconvenience.  
If things are going well for you financially, GREAT!! Is there room for improvement? As Benjamin Franklin says “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Historians don’t record history until after you’ve finished your work.  I think the real litmus test for how well you’ve managed your money is measured when you’ll finished your work on earth, or when you’ve retired.  What will your legacy be—financially speaking? The scripture says that a wise man/woman will leave an inheritance to his children’s children.
(Mortgage and Money Coach Damon Carr is the owner of ACE Financial. Damon can be reached at 412-856-1183.)