As you help pack up the minifridge, laptop and extra-long twin sheets for your college freshman, you might consider a few other last-minute chores: • Scour your health-insurance coverage for loopholes. • Reread your homeowner’s insurance policy. • Call your lawyer.Sending a child off to college for the first time is wrenching enough, [ Read More → ]

A California woman deep in credit card debt turned to a debt-settlement company that immediately began deducting money from her bank account for its promised services. After three months, the woman started getting calls from her creditors and learned they had never heard from the company. She asked for her money [ Read More → ]

Halifax Reward current account customers, who are already eligible for £60 a year (£5 per month) in cash rewards when they fund their account with £1,000 each calendar month, can now earn up to £120 a year in rewards by applying for the new Halifax Clarity credit card, launched in [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON - Consumer borrowing fell in June for a fifth straight month as households keep cutting back on credit card use. Borrowing dropped at an annual rate of $1.3 billion in June, the Federal Reserve reported Friday. That marked the 16th drop in overall credit in the past 17 months. Americans backed [ Read More → ]

Whomever President Barack Obama taps to head the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection could find it difficult to keep ahead of the credit-card industry. The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, known as the Card Act, was intended to reshape the contours of consumer finance. Among other [ Read More → ]

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—The latest form of identity theft doesn’t depend on stealing your Social Security number. Now thieves are targeting your kid’s number long before the little one even has a bank account. Hundreds of online businesses are using computers to find dormant Social Security numbers — usually those assigned to [ Read More → ]

Millions of Brits have hit financial difficulties during the recession and struggled to make ends meet. It’s been a tough few years that will have left many people with a glitch or two on repayment records. Paying off some lenders one month and others the next could have left marks on credit [ Read More → ]

With all the excitement of planning a holiday, it’s easy to forget to research the best type of travel money to take. If you don’t do your homework, however, you could end up far worse off at the end of your trip. With the pound’s continuing weakness against the euro and the dollar, [ Read More → ]

NEW YORK — Better payment rates for mortgages, auto loans and credit cards helped lift consumer-focused amp; Co.’s second-quarter profit by 12 percent. The San Francisco-based bank on Wednesday joined , JPMorgan Chase & Co. and in reporting earnings that rose in the April-June period as loan losses fell from [ Read More → ]

WASHINGTON  — Big companies are building up cash and are expected to report strong earnings starting this week. Not so for small businesses that can’t get loans — or hire freely until they do. The gap helps explain why the economic rebound isn’t stronger and could even stall. Federal Reserve Chairman [ Read More → ]