Saturday, September 13, 2008

Lexington Law (Part 1)

Nothing upsets me more than industries that prey on consumers who are already having trouble. I'm all for the open market, and don't believe consumers by and large need to be protected from themselves.  Nevertheless, I wouldn't want to ever get into the pawn shop business, or payday loan business.  It just wouldn't give me any satisfaction.
Along a similar line, I can't stand credit repair organizations that are rip-offs.  In my mind, Lexington Law is one of those rip offs.
Now, I will say that the FTC is technically correct when they say consumers can do their own credit verification, just as technically you can give yourself a haircut.  But the cards are stacked against the consumer, which is why so many look to credit repair service providers.
Which is where Lexington Law comes in.  Wronged consumers with credit issues, search the web and find the website for Lexington Law. "Ahhh, maybe a specialized law firm can help me...."
What they don't realize is the law firm is simply a mechanism for avoiding the credit repair organization restrictions placed on firms by the federal government (can't collect fees before service provided, must be bonded, etc).  NO LAWYER WILL EVER LOOK AT ANYTHING FOR YOU.  They have a firm that contracts with the law firm front you sign the agreement with, with hourly employees who send out letters.  So, the $100 sign up fee and $50 / month gets you form letters sent by an hourly employee?  Is that it?
Oh, there's more.


Mint

So, even though I am surrounded by very financially fastidious people, I am not.  Despite man January efforts, I never became a QuickBooks user.  (Part of the problem has been their horrible Mac support.  Not being able to suck down my banking transactions always killed my efforts.)  
But in 2000, I started using Yodlee.  At first it really just helped me look at my family balance sheet, and monitor in one place the combined investment portfolio.

But what I have always really needed was a way to track spending against budgets.  Yodlee grew to include this functionality, but I never used it.  Now Mint has taken Yodlee's info and made it really really useful (and pretty).  It automatically groups and aggregates your expenditures.  You can go in and make sure they are correct, put rules in place, and tag items beyond the categories in which they are grouped.  Now I can EASILY track all my spending over time, look at pretty graphs of trends, tag items (useful for business expenses and tax planning) for other reasons, and not spend a ton of time to accomplish all those things.

Mint really is great.  If you want to be more financially responsible, but have never wanted to be one of those QuickBooks obsessed financially astute people, get over to Mint.  
 

Return to Normalcy

No one likes an economic downturn.  But perhaps one good aspect of more difficult times is media attention turns from the out of control lifestyles of celebrities and entertainment stars, to the real life issues of everyday citizens.  I hope to enter on this blog links to resources that help people manage their financial life more intelligently and efficiently, manage their investments intelligently, and promote a healthy perspective on consumption.