Banklady Credit Doctor

Category: Doom and Gloom

  • Government To Mail Out $1,200 Checks To Most Americans; Unemployment Expansion #Stimulus

    The US Senate agreed to a bipartisan $2 trillion stimulus deal. It’s expected to eventually get through the House and be enacted in coming days.

    $1,200 Checks

    The part that people are most interested in that the government will mailing out checks of $1,200 to most Americans.

    • Each individual (non-dependent) gets $1,200; couples get $2,400 (total); plus $500 per child. For example, a couple with two children will get a $3,400 check in the mail.
    • Even those who don’t make money and those on Social Security will get these checks.
    • The only exception is those who earn more than $99,000 per year ($198,000 for a couple) who will not get anything.
    • There’s a phase-out from $75,000 – $99,999 ($150,000 – $198,000 for couples) where you’ll get a smaller check.
    • Payment is based on your prior tax return (2018 or 2019), but if you make too much in 2020 they money will be clawed back, I believe.

    Unemployment Benefits

    Another big component is the expansion of unemployment benefits. The increased benefits include:

    • Provides enhanced unemployment benefits for 4 months. This increases your unemployment check by $600/week, on top of what the state regularly gives, for 4 months.
    • Extends unemployment 13 weeks longer than usual rules. Regular is 26 weeks, I think, so now it would be 39 weeks. (This kicks in back from January 27.)
    • Extends unemployment to self-employed workers as well. That would include gig workers like Uber drivers.
    • Extends unemployment to furloughed employees as well. The added goal here is that businesses should not fire employees, instead leave them on as furloughed.

    Small Business Loans

    This fund is for loans of up to $10M to companies of 500 employees or fewer. Businesses who pledge to keep their workers can take a loan from the government, with the eventual forgiveness of the loan if they continue to pay their employees. I’m sketchy on the details here, but it sounds like you can get forgiveness on the loan for 8 weeks worth of payroll, mortgage interest, and rent costs.

    $2T List

    Here’s a partial break-down of the $2 trillion, as best as I could find:

    1. $250B for direct payments/checks to individuals and families. (see above)
    2. $367B for small business loans. (see above)
    3. $250B to boost unemployment insurance benefits. (see above)
    4. $500B in loans for distressed companies. $75B of this is earmarked for airlines and travel.
    5. $130B in funding for hospitals and medical equipment.
    6. $150B in funding for state and local governments.

    Taxes

    • Payroll taxes for 2020 can be deferred.
    • When are taxes due in 2020? IRS tax–filing extension explained. The IRS says individuals and businesses can delay filing and paying federal tax bills for 90 days, to July 15 from April 15, as part of an emergency relief plan amid the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Don’t Believe Anything Equifax Says in the Breach of 1/2 the U.S. Population

    Don’t Believe Anything Equifax Says in the Breach of 1/2 the U.S. Population

    First, Let’s start with the Banklady’s take on the Reasons why the Equifax data breach is a total disaster:

    1. Security breach on their end.
    2. They knew a month ago and waited this long to give the details to the people impacted (that’s us).
    3. It looks like some of their shady executives were dumping stock in the meantime.
    4. Their website to “help” looks like it was designed by the slowest kid in fourth grade. People are questioning whether to even trust that site.
    5. Once you enter your information on the makeshift site they made to check to see if you have been on of the people affected it doesn’t even tell you if were impacted for sure.
    6. The site won’t let you enroll for any help and they won’t send a reminder when that’s ready.

    Equifax as we have told you about in the past is one of the nation’s three main credit reporting agencies. They announced a “cybersecurity incident” that could potentially impact roughly 143 million U.S. consumers. They knew about it for weeks before they revealed it to the general population. The news also comes just months after a breach occurred at an Equifax subsidiary earlier this year, exposing W-2 and payroll data to criminals.

    Equifax data breach exposes personal info of millions of Americans

    According to Equifax, hackers exploited a security vulnerability in a U.S.-based application to gain access to consumers’ personal files. After discovering the breach on July 29 of this year, the company says it “acted immediately to stop the intrusion” and “promptly engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review to determine the scope of the intrusion, including the specific data impacted.” (more…)

  • Will Financial Doom Hit the U.S. Markets?

    September_DoomsdayWe recently received an email from a concerned family member who warned us about an impending financial doom. This relative knows we own lots of stocks and thought we should be warned. I looked into the video they sent us warning about the Shemitah which is set to occur this month. Mostly a conspiracy theory that the US is looking toward some kind of a financial meltdown a lot worse than the market drop you saw a few weeks ago.

    Here is a summary of the video that speaks of the Financial Doom predicted in September 2015:
    He notes a pattern of judgments at seven-year intervals stemmed from the shemitah which basically stands for “washing away of things” such as debt. The video went back on historical records on other shemitah years since 1900 where he had some notable findings but nothing groundbreaking.
    (more…)