Financial News Features

For would-be buyers, it may also turn out to be an opportunity if the market softens. Howard Dvorkin, a CPA and chairman of Florida-based Debt.com, says this is no time for buyers to take on a debt that may prove to be unmanageable. “If you find yourself saying out loud, ‘I think I can stretch my budget to buy this home,’ don’t do it,” Dvorkin told ConsumerAffairs. “Your budget will be stretched after you buy a home. Don’t forget all the background expenses that go into a just-bought home – from taxes to furnishings, from repairs to maintenance.”

“They’ll let you compare costs at different gas stations in your area,” says Howard Dvorkin, a certified public accountant and the chairman of Florida-based Debt.com. “If you have a rewards credit card, you’re racking up points that you can redeem for cash back,” says Dvorkin.

Howard Dvorkin, CPA and chairman of Debt.com, says in a Q&A on that website that most scholarships don’t check how recipients use the money. However, he adds that scholarships usually don’t help pay off student loans, since you have to be enrolled in college to get a scholarship.

“If you’re fed up with bank fees, you’ll really hate P2P loans,” says Howard Dvorkin, CPA and Chairman of Debt.com. “On top of the interest rate you’ll pay, there’s the origination fee, which can be as low as 1 percent but as high as 8 percent. That’s much more than a bank or credit union will charge you for a personal loan.”

For now, Howard Dvorkin, a CPA, says that credit cards still offer more value that BNPL services can't replace. "While in some cases BNPL offers free financing with no interest or fees, the service lacks the ability to give you any rewards you would obtain for your purchase from using a credit card like cash back, points, or miles," says Dvorkin.

“These sound like boring answers to the heavy question of financial security during scary times,” says Howard Dvorkin, CPA and chairman of Debt.com, “but too many people overreact and take big risks instead of checking first to see if they’ve done all the basics.”