4 Options For Bills In Collections.

January 2nd, 2010

What can you do when you don’t have health insurance and you can’t pay your medical bills that have been sent to a collections agency?

Well, that’s the question recently fielded by Bankrate.com’s Justin Harelik.

The reader’s mother has been dealing with bills for her open-heart surgery that were sent to collection in 1996! She worked with the collectors to lower the monthly payments to something she could afford on her social security payments, but now the agency is expecting her to pay the full $20,000 outstanding balance. This seems incredibly unfair, since she’s paying them in good faith and they are cashing the checks, but apparently it is perfectly legal for them to do.

Here are the 4 options laid out by Mr. Harelik:

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Brazilian island resort hit by mudslide, 17 dead

January 2nd, 2010

ANGRA DOS REIS, Brazil – A rain-loosened slab of hillside collapsed on three houses and an upscale waterfront lodge after New Year celebrations at an island resort near Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 17 people, Brazilian authorities said.

About 120 rescuers scrambled through mud and around toppled trees and large rocks to search for other survivors of the mudslide that also injured at least 10 people early Friday. Police helicopters and navy vessels were helping in the rescue efforts.

“People had never seen so much rain in this region,” Rio de Janeiro’s vice governor, Luiz Fernando Pezao, told Globo TV, and he indicated he feared the death toll could rise. “

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2009, year in review.

January 1st, 2010

What a year it’s been!

As the history books close on 2009, I thought it might be nice to take a look back on the topics that were hot on Simple Debt-Free Finance over the past year.

401(k) Plans.

2009 saw a lot of talk about the future of the 401(k). It seems only natural, given that it is one of the major means of saving for retirement for many American workers who had just seen those savings drop like a stone in the 2008 stock market crash. A lot of the talk was centered around ways to “fix” the 401(k) when it isn’t broken. This bo

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