Personal Finance and Investing

The latest numbers are in and it looks promising.

In fact, it looks as if credit management among consumers will continue to improve for 2010. Although unemployment continues to remain an obstacle for many consumers, credit card delinquencies will continue to decline in 2010, according to TransUnion.

Although many analysts predict that the rate of credit card delinquencies will slow down during the upcoming year, they will nevertheless decline, which is a good sign for creditors everywhere.

TransUnion expects 90-day credit card delinquencies to drop off nearly 1.04 percent by the end of 2010.

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The US Treasury Department just might look like a knight on a white horse to some homeowners facing foreclosure and unable to get cooperation from their mortgage company.

Despite a federally backed loan program meant to create permanent loan modifications, banks have been slow to work with consumers. That may change as the US government threatens fines to be assessed against banks unless they speed up their mortgage modification programs meant to keep homeowners in their houses.

The loan modification programs are meant to permanently lower mortgage payments so they are more affordable for homeowners trapped by a struggling economy.

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You swore you wouldn’t do it.

You swore you’d keep your spending in check this holiday season and lay off the credit cards. But here you are again: stuck with loads of credit card debt and equal parts post-holiday guilt.

Don’t give up hope just yet, though. The fact of the matter is that there are a few, simple ways to control your debt and spending and eliminate credit card debt so that it doesn’t rule your life.

The following tips will help get you started on a new, financially responsible 2010:

• Consolidate your debt – Often times, debt can seem all the more overwhelming and difficult to manage when you are struggling with numerous credit cards.

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For more than 80 years, stocks have been paying dividends that have provided an important boost to the overall return of stocks. Dividends often get downplayed but they historically have been very significant. Over the last 82 years of history in the stock market, an average of 35% of monthly returns from stocks have come from dividends, a number much higher than most would guess. Twice there have been entire decades where the dividends paid to shareholders of stocks made up more than 50% of the average monthly return.

Companies have a choice about how much of a dividend they want to pay and many companies have cut their dividends during the recession.

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