Jeff Sipes's Blog

    The Obama administration is urging banks to fund home loans to borrowers with weaker credit, trying to create momentum toward economic recovery.  White house officials say they are encouraging banks to start lending to borrowers with weaker credit again and to take advantage of taxpayer-back...

Have you heard the news?  No, not that Kim and Kanye named their new baby after a point on a compass, or that the government is looking at all of our emails (can we ask the government to please delete some of our spam?) but that the Sacramento real estate market is on the move.  Things are heati...

Men and women are different, that much we know, so divided that the most popular relationship book of all time is “Men are from Mars, Women from Venus.”  But do the sexes manage their credit cards differently, too?     We might have preconceived notions of how men and women use their credit card...

Have you ever wondered where and when the practice of credit scoring started?  Probably not, but I’m going to tell you anyway.  If you’re like me, you may have just assumed that credit scores have been around forever, but believe it or not the phenomenon of credit scoring started more recently. ...

  As we see the nation crawl out of the dark years of its housing bust, spearheaded by up to 20% appreciation in some formerly distressed markets like Phoenix, Arizona and Sacramento, California, we reflect on those who were less fortunate, who faced dire financial troubles and lost their humble ...

These days it seems like every company is offering to enroll you in an automatic payment program.  While they claim auto pay is a service solely for your convenience, they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.  In fact, auto pay provides a lot of security, control, and extra incom...

  Last weekend it rained cats and dogs, so instead of enjoying a sunny summer day, I went into the basement to clean out the mountain of boxes and bins that had piled up, filled with my financial paperwork.  I pulled up a chair and started opening boxes and looking through all of the documents: a...

Building and keeping a good credit score is a function of responsible use of credit cards and other loans.  It’s simple – pay on time and keep your debt low and your score will come up.   But what about if you don’t have an established positive credit score, and you’re starting from scratch?  Us...

What's the fastest growing crime in the United States?  Would you guess it has something to do with gun violence, corporate fraud, or maybe texting and driving?  Nope!  In fact, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the US, so prevalent that every year about 15 million citizens have thei...