{"id":458,"date":"2007-01-11T15:26:11","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T19:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/01\/11\/qs-quickies\/"},"modified":"2007-01-12T20:41:44","modified_gmt":"2007-01-13T00:41:44","slug":"qs-quickies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2007\/01\/11\/qs-quickies\/","title":{"rendered":"q.s. quickies"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Latin abbreviation that this Editor should\u00a0consider using more often is q.s.<\/em><\/a> – which stands for quantum satis <\/em>or quantum sufficit<\/em> and means “as much as suffices.”\u00a0 Doctors sometimes state the dosage of a medication to be taken by a patient as q.s<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some items that are worth posting here at shlep<\/em> don’t need a lot of space to be effective.\u00a0 Others deserve a fuller treatment but aren’t likely to get it any time soon — for them, a small dose seems better than a stale one or none at all.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today’s\u00a0blurbs come from both of those categories:<\/p>\n

\"qKeyN\"<\/strong>\u00a0\"sKeyN\"\u00a0\u00a0Payday Loans<\/strong>: With holiday shopping bills hanging over\u00a0their heads, a lot of people with poor credit ratings are tempted to turn to so-called payday loans<\/em> – which appear to be structured to keep people in debt.\u00a0 Jeff Sovern at Consumer Law & Policy Blog<\/em><\/a> noted recently that they are a hot topic in the media these days; he links to several articles, including one from the New York Times, “Seductively Easy, Payday Loans Often Snowball<\/a>” (Dec. 23, 2006).\u00a0 According to the Center for Responsible Lending<\/a>,<\/p>\n

“Payday lending (sometimes called cash advance) is the practice of using a post-dated check or electronic checking account information as collateral for a short-term loan. To qualify, borrowers need only personal identification, a checking account, and an income from a job or government benefits.”\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Center offers an excellent Overview<\/a> of the topic, as well as a list of the\u00a0Nine Signs<\/a> of a Predatory Payday loan, Payday Policy Recommendations<\/a>, and more.\u00a0 Check out the Georgia’s Payday Loan Law<\/a>, which is considered a model for prevending such predatory loans.<\/p>\n

\"billCollectorS\"\u00a0Similar complaints are being raised about Paystub and Holiday Refund Anticipation Loans [RALs]<\/strong>, which are short-term loans secured by the taxpayer\u2019s expected<\/em> tax refund, but are especially risky, because they’re calculated prior<\/em> to filling out the borrower’s income tax forms. See Pay Stub and Holiday RALs: Faster, Costlier, Riskier in the Race to the Bottom<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(pdf), by Chi Chi Wu, National Consumer Law Center, and Jean Ann Fox, Consumer Federation of America (Nov. 2006); and MSNBC<\/em>\/AP, “Tax-refund loan seen costly<\/a>,” Jan. 11, 2007.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"blackCheckS\" Court Facilitator programs in Washington State<\/strong>:\u00a0 Like California, Washington State uses “courthouse facilitators” in family court matters. [via SelfHelpSupport.org]\u00a0 If you’ve ever wondered just what a facilitator does to help pro se<\/em> litigants, take a look at How Courthouse Facilitators Can Help<\/a>, which also has links to other related topics covered at the Washington courts website.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"tinyRedCheck\"\u00a0\u00a0\u201cEstate Planning for Persons with Less Than $5 Million<\/strong><\/a>\u201d (March 2007), is a lengthy paper available at SSRN, that is aimed at the needs of “people of moderate wealth” (viz.<\/em> net worth of one to five million dollars).\u00a0 It’s written by two lawyers and a professor (Jonathan G. Blattmachr, Jonathan G.;\u00a0Georgiana J. Slade; and Bridget Crawford). The article explains that lifetime transfers are among the most effective ways to reduce estate taxes, and \u201cdetails and evaluates eleven strategies that may apply to clients in the modest wealth category.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"blackCheckS\"\u00a0New\u00a0 Year legislation<\/strong>:\u00a0The National Conference of State Legislatures says at least 32 states had new laws going into effect on January 1, 2007.\u00a0\u00a0They are listed by topic in\u00a0New Laws Ring in the New Year<\/a>\u00a0(Dec. 22, 2006).\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"qKeyG\"\u00a0 \"sKeyG\"\u00a0\u00a0Just Cancel the @#%$* Account!<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is an article in the Dec. 22, 2006 edition of PC World<\/em>. [via ConsumerWorld<\/a>.org]\u00a0 Author Tom Spring noticed that many free trial offers on the web are very difficult to cancel.\u00a0 To evaluate how difficult canceling an online service can be, he signed up for and then canceled 32 accounts, each at a different site (they are listed and rated). His results?<\/p>\n

About a third of the services in my sample made the seemingly simple goal of canceling very hard to achieve (see the “Big Hassle” entries in “Want to Cancel That Service?<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

Not all of my experiences were negative. Services such as a monthly New York Times TimesSelect online subscription and a monthly Consumer Reports Online account took only minutes to cancel and without lingering strings. But some others made me feel as though I’d joined the Sopranos’ family business: Once I signed up, there was no quitting!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Latin abbreviation that this Editor should\u00a0consider using more often is q.s. – which stands for quantum satis or quantum sufficit and means “as much as suffices.”\u00a0 Doctors sometimes state the dosage of a medication to be taken by a patient as q.s.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some items that are worth posting here at shlep don’t need a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991,896],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-items","category-resources-consumer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}