Author Archives: Jay Butchko
Congratulations on Being Frugal, but Now It’s Time to Get Out of Debt
In the 90s, working adults who were struggling with debt used to get a lot of finger wagging from personal finance experts about how they could easily pay down their debts quickly if they could avoid the temptation to stop at Starbucks on the way to work. The following decade, when the oldest millennials… Read More »
Huntingdon Valley Home Contractor Convicted of Defrauding Nine Clients
Home renovation projects do not always go according to plan. Even when contractors give you a good faith estimate about the timetable and the cost of materials, unexpected delays can always arise. A winter storm can require the contractor to take a week or more off of work, waiting for the snow to melt. … Read More »
How to Buy and Keep Your Own House in Philadelphia
Homeownership is a big financial goal for a lot of people. Unfortunately, it is very hard to achieve unless you already have some assets other than the percentage of your employment income that you have managed to put into savings. Qualifying for a mortgage and following through with the purchase is only the first… Read More »
Is It Bad If a Home Contractor Asks You to Pay a Deposit?
Do you have enough money sitting in your bank account right now to replace your roof or replace broken pipes and repair the damage they caused? You probably do not, because most Americans do not have $400 of available funds to cover an unexpected expense, and all home repairs except the most minor ones… Read More »
It’s Not Fair That You Are in Debt, but You Can Fix It
In a perfect world, no one would be judgmental of others for circumstances that are beyond their control, but in practice it happens all the time. How many times have you not told other people about your financial problems because you were embarrassed. Perhaps your closest friends and family members do not even know… Read More »
Beware of Odometer Fraud
The odometer on the car is the part on the dashboard that shows the number of miles the car has traveled since it was manufactured. In other words, how old or new a car is depends not only on its model year but also on its mileage. Odometer fraud is when a seller tampers… Read More »
How to Recover From a Cash Flip Scam
One might think that scammers would set their sights on wealthy people. After all, the more money someone has, the more money he or she can send you, and once the victim discovers the deception, he or she might just say, “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,” and… Read More »
Debt Relief Is Better As a Holiday Gift Than As a New Year’s Resolution
New Year’s resolutions are usually about adopting new good habits or abandoning bad habits. In general, it is easier to keep resolutions that you phrase as, “I will start doing this new, but not especially fun thing” than the ones that you phrase as, “I will quit doing this thing that I enjoy.” In… Read More »
Credit Repair, Debt Consolidation, and Credit Repair: Should You Pay Someone to Do It for You?
There are plenty of ways to improve your creditworthiness. The one that pops up at the top of the organic search results, namely reducing your expenses, increasing your income, and putting more of it toward debt repayment, is easier said than done for most people. Prices are high, and wages are stagnant, so even… Read More »
Can You Pickle Your Way Out of Debt?
Whoever said that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar has never opened a jar of pickles at a picnic. The only reason the flies do not swarm around the pickles is because the human guests at the picnic eat all of the pickles before the flies have the chance… Read More »
