Got a Citibank credit card, or any one of the co-branded cards, including Sears and MySpace, among many others? You may have hoped you'd be safe from unreasonable rate hikes thanks to new Federal constraints on banks' ability to raise rates for borrowers. But those laws don't go into effect until February 2010, and for Citibank, there's no time like the present.

According to the Financial Times, Citibank has already raised rates for you -- and you -- and you!

As many as 15 million U.S. card accounts in total. And the increases are big. A Credit Suisse analysis of the past several months' data indicates that rates were up an average of 24% between January and April of this year. That represents a three percentage point increase for those who don't pay their balance in full each month. For instance, if your rates were 10% before, now they're 13%; this would represent about a $200 difference in the amount of interest you'd pay in a year on a $5,000 balance.

With student lending volume growing at an unprecedented clip, many families are taking some comfort in the numerous repayment assistance programs that can come as a perk with some jobs -- most of which require government work.

But today's Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that "Scrutiny Grows as U.S. Pays Staffers' Student Loans."

Critics of the lavish spending on student loan repayment programs charge that the security of a government job is an enough of an attraction by itself, especially in this environment, and questions where the student loan repayments are anything more than a handout.

They were adopted in 2002 as part of a plan to attract students to public service -- that's what they call it. I would call it bureaucracy -- but some contend that they're an unnecessary waste of money.

Whether the federal government should offer student loan repayment assistance is outside of my sphere of competence. But with the government wracking up record deficits, there will almost certainly be a push toward cost cutting over the next few years -- and that could put these programs on the line.

So here's my plea to college students and prospective college students: Please, please, please do not take out loans planning to take advantage of these programs without any viable contingency plan. You have no idea whether these programs will exist when you graduate, and any financial aid officer who tells you about them has no stake in the outcome.

On Tuesday, the casino resort developer, Fontainebleau Las Vegas LLC announced that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

This resulted from the company's failure to get a lender to complete $800 Million of funding for the construction of a $2.9 billion property on the Vegas strip. This is not Fontainebleau's first dispute with creditors.In April, it filed a $3 billion lawsuit against several lenders including Band of America, JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, to pay 3,000 construction workers.

The major Vegas project was set to be completed and open for business by October, but the financial gridlock put a halt to construction. Fontainebleau stated that its main goal is to secure funding to complete this project and work to restructure its current debt. The Miami Beach property is not included in this bankruptcy.

WalletPop's Lan Nguyen chats with Andy Firoved, CEO of Homeowner Toolbox, about what you need to know about landing that home loan modification.

Firoved, whose online company specializes in helping users put together the right financial package for lenders, tells you how the system works and what you should and should not do to get that needed loan modification.

And for the first 20 listeners, Firoved is offering to help you for free. Click to myhomeownertoolbox.com and enter "Nguyen" in the promo code.

Having trouble paying off your debt? So is Hillary Clinton. As of April 2009, the Secretary of State has accumulated more than $2 million in campaign debt. All of it is owed to one creditor: Mark Penn, the former senior Clinton strategist who, his critics say, ran a miserly campaign and lost her the presidential nomination.

With a recession in full swing, Clinton is facing increasing difficulties in paying off her debt. President Obama promised to help persuade his contacts to contribute to Clinton's debt if she endorsed him in the general election. She jumped at the chance, responding with an adoring speech urging everyone to support Obama. Joe Biden then joined in, signing an appeal to more than 3 million Obama donors to help Clinton pay off her campaign debt. President Obama may have thought he had repaid Clinton's support by making her Secretary of State, but her position limits her ability to raise money due to the Hatch Act.

Even though it's a great time to start a small business, it's not a cakewalk. Funding is still an issue, and accurately assessing your business plan is tricky without an objective party. There are plenty of self-proclaimed gurus and experts out there who are willing to take your money in exchange for cookie cutter advice, but don't go paying up just yet. Here are four free or cheap services that will help you launch your small business and hang on long enough to make sure it's seaworthy.

It's not an honor I'm proud of, but I'm pretty sure that out of the many writers who contribute to WalletPop, payday loans is my beat.

At least, I wrote about them quite a bit a year ago during a period in which I found myself short of cash and, yes, frequenting payday loan stores. (If you're curious, you can find some of my posts here and here. Oh, and here.)

Anyway, a relative of mine (honest, it's not me) recently told me about a loophole he found that saved him $20 at a payday loan outlet, and I immediately thought, "Boy, this could make an interesting story for WalletPop."

I don't know how it works in payday loan stores everywhere across the country, but last November, in Ohio, the public voted to rein in payday lending to cap the annual interest rate on these short-term loans. So the aforementioned relative of mine took out a loan for $400 and was going to be charged $460. That said, due to changes in the law, he was being charged $40 for the loan.

The extra $20 was to change his $440 money order into cash.

Here's the scoop: the airline industry and credit card companies have promised more perks to help consumers save money. However, when our fellow WalletPoppers Andrea Chalupa and Todd Pruzan talked with Mr. Credit Card of AskMrCreditCard.com for Walletpop Radio, another strategy came to light.

It turns out credit card companies, like so many of us, have been living beyond their means, promising perks they couldn't deliver. For more info on that, listen to this short Walletpop Radio show segment on the best credit card perks left standing.

With mortgage rates hovering around record lows, the mortgage refinancing business is booming.

The days of pay-option NINJA (No income, no job/assets) loans are over, and fixed rate mortgages are cool again. The New York Times reports that the ultimate conservative financing method -- the 15-year fixed rate mortgage -- is gaining on the 30-year mortgage.

But is that too conservative? I think so. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say that with interest rates this low and the specter of inflation as strong as it is, you would have to be nuts to take out anything other than 30-year fixed rate mortgage right now.

Here's why: A 15-year fixed rate mortgage achieves very little savings compared with a 30-year mortgage, but lacks any of the flexibility. Let's look at it with numbers (courtesy of BankRate.com):

• The interest rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 4.98%. The monthly payment on a $200,000 loan is $1,071.20.
  
• The interest rate on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage is 4.63%. The monthly payment on a $200,000 loan is $1,543.31.

In the coming years, many books will be written about the subprime fiasco -- most of them reported from the outside of the bubble looking in. If the authors look close enough, they might see Edmund L. Andrews staring back out at them.

It will be hard for any chronicle of the bubble to match the stomach-clenching verisimilitude of Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown, Andrews's account of his own mortgage disaster. Andrews (right), an economics reporter for the New York Times, was covering the market meltdown as a journalist -- and, to his dismay, living the meltdown at home. Turns out all the economic expertise in the world couldn't keep the subprime crisis from tearing apart his personal finances and his new marriage.

Students are worrying about more than just their grades according to a new study by Edison Media Research.

Nearly one in five polled students reported that at least one parent had lost a job in the past year. Many young people are taking refuge in graduate school, buying time until the economy improves even as they amass more debt from student loans. Some of the findings in the study:

• 22% of students said they worry a lot about having enough cash to get through a typical week at school.
• One third of students said they really worry about the finances of their parents.
• Nearly one in five changed plans this year and decided to attend graduate or professional school because an undergraduate degree might not be enough to get them a job.
• 11% of those whose parents lost a job veered away from grad school because they could not afford it.

I don't want to sound like I'm short on empathy, but what's new? As long as I remember, college students have had financial problems. Many work multiple jobs and live in slum housing just to get through college. Both of my kids are in college and have to live very frugally to make it.

Like most parents, I wish we could help them more. But you know what? This is the way the world really works. In the real world, the economy goes up and down and people have to work harder to make a living. I think there are some learning experiences in this recession where kids learn there still isn't a free lunch.

Barbara Bartlein is the People Pro. For her FREE e-mail newsletter, please visit: The People Pro.

Divorce appears to be one business that is recession proof according to statistics released by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Though Wisconsin has one of the lowest divorce rates in the country, there were 16,458 divorces in Wisconsin in 2007. Milwaukee County, which has Wisconsin's largest population, granted 2,565 divorces in 2207 and 2,584 in 2008. Divorce filings haven't gone down in Milwaukee County in 2009 either, with filings constant through the first two months of the year.

This is too bad, as I have long held the position that at least half of the marriages that go belly up could be saved with a little work. And divorce isn't cheap. I don't mean the legal proceedings, though they can cost a bundle especially if children are involved.

I'm talking about when the dust settles and both partners start rebuilding their lives. Women are especially at a disadvantaged as they often experience a drop in their lifestyle. In spite of "equality" in the workplace, women still earn less money than men.

Wondering if you can qualify for President Obama's mortgage-assistance program? Or just wondering what type of programs are available to refinance?

Now one place has all those answers, and will even provide an assessment of your financial position. MortgageReport went live Wednesday, a well-designed site with all the basic information about mortgage options, and all the details you'll need to act. And it's all free.

Ah, Sunday morning! It's nearly upon us again. The languid wake-up. The mocha java. The nova and cream cheese. The tangy mimosa. The New York Times. The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Magazine's Money Issue. The glance at the table of contents. The flipping ahead. The credit and credit cards. The ballooning debt. The inevitable bankruptcy. The creeping dread. The moist paranoia. The undulating queasiness. The pushing the bagel aside. The not finishing the mimosa. The crawling back into bed. The curling into fetal position. The whimpering and weeping. The desperate wishing that it were All a Bad Dream. Ah, Sunday morning!

If you're a Times reader, get ready for a page-turning, stomach-churning weekend. The Money Issue -- given everything, the editors might as well have called it the Credit Issue -- taps into our nightmares of financial nuclear winter, on a wide level and a personal one too. The paper's economics reporter Edmund L. Andrews provides a personal tale of his experience of buying a house outside Washington, in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was supposed to know better, he says -- he was, after all, reporting on the subprime mortgage crisis -- and yet he jumped in anyway, enchanted by the lure of easy homeownership and easier money. (Andrews' article, tellingly, excerpts his forthcoming memoir, Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown.)

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's First Family of Personal Finance, answer your money questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

Lending money is a touchy subject and in our current volatile economy, it's not uncommon for family and friends to turn to each other for a loan. We know how much you care for your loved ones, but this can cause significant problems ... especially when that loan goes unpaid.

One WalletPop reader found herself in this situation and wondered about the tax liabilities. Watch our video response below to find out what we advised her to do.

Dear Ken and Daria,

Can I write off an unpaid loan to a family member?

-Kathy


If you do decide to loan money to a family member, protect yourself with Ken and Daria's sample loan note.