Turning Red to Black Blog

This may seem like an obvious statement but not all businesses employ this principle regularly, if at all.According to a survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review the most surprising element is how dramatically meeting employees’ needs influences performance. A simple “core need” (as identified by the survey) like encouraging employees to take breaks can help an employee to be as much as 50% more engaged with their work when they return. Simply encouraging your employees to take the very breaks they are required by law to take should be very easy to implement.

We’ve all come across dozens (if not hundreds) of articles that tell debtors what to do about a debt collector when they call.  Usually these articles center on the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) which was devised by Congress to amend the Consumer Credit Protection Act (CCPA) and address “the use of abusive, deceptive, and unfair debt collection practices by many collectors.” To be fair these practices should be addressed and should not be allowed.  Anyone subjected to these methods of debt collection should not have to tolerate these practices and we applaud this set of rules and abide by them daily.  In fact we’ve followed these rules on moral and ethical grounds for decades before their inception.

According to the 2014 Credit.com American Dream Survey* the majority of respondents identified retiring financially secure at age 65 followed by getting out of debt as their top definitions of the “American Dream.” When asked about their priorities over the next year or two, nearly half of the respondents identified debt reduction among their top priorities, with credit card debt leading the way. The vast majority of these respondents (79%) indicated that they would be able to achieve this goal in their lifetime.

A changing landscape for home ownership among millennial college grads may leave collateral assets down to a VIN number, or perhaps, a smartphone.According to the July 3, 2014 “College Debt and Home Buying” article in the New York Times,* “Student loan debt is commonly cited as a primary factor in the declined homeownership rate among 25- to 34-year-olds.”

One of the biggest obstacles our industry has faced in recent years is the boom in cell phone use, email, and text messaging – among others. There has been much talk about revising the FCDPA (Fair Debt Collection Practices Act) in recent years. I emphasize the word 'Talk' because that's all that has happened.