Current Events in December 2013

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and several states are suing CashCall and related companies, charging that they engaged in unfair, deceptive, and abusive practices, including illegally debiting consumer checking accounts for loans that were void.

“Today we are taking action against CashCall for collecting money it had no right to take from consumers,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Online lending is rapidly growing and deserves ample regulatory attention. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will take action against online lenders and servicers that engage in unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices.”

California-based CashCall, its subsidiary, WS Funding LLC, and its affiliate, Delbert Services Corporation, a Nevada collection agency, are all under the common ownership of J. Paul Reddam, and are affiliated with Western Sky Financial, a South Dakota-based online lender.

Western Sky

Western Sky Financial asserted state laws did not apply to its business because it was based on an Indian reservation and owned by a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. But this relationship with a tribe does not exempt Western Sky from having to comply with state laws when it makes loans over the Internet to consumers in various states, the complaint alleges.

The loans ranged from $850 to $10,000, and typically had upfront fees, lengthy repayment terms, and annual interest rates from nearly 90 percent to 343 percent. Many consumers signed loan agreements permitting loan payments to be debited directly from their bank accounts, similar to a payday lender. The loans were then acquired by WS Funding and serviced by CashCall.

In September 2013, Western Sky stopped making loans and began to shut down its business after several states began investigations and court actions. But CashCall and its collection agency, Delbert, have continued to take monthly installment payments from consumers’ bank accounts, the CFPB said.

The CFPB’s complaint alleges that the defendants violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s prohibitions on unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts and practices. The Bureau’s investigation showed that the high-cost loans violated either licensing requirements or interest-rate caps – or both – in at least eight states:  Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and North Carolina.

Under statutes in at least those eight states, any obligation to pay such loans was nullified in whole or in part by law. Therefore, the defendants are collecting money that consumers do not owe.

This is the first CFPB online lending lawsuit. The Bureau has jurisdiction over a broad array of companies, including online lenders, loan servicers, and debt collectors. This lawsuit is a significant step in the Bureau’s efforts to address regulatory-evasion schemes that are increasingly becoming a feature of the online small-dollar and payday lending industry.

States also file complaints

Colorado and several other states today joined CFPB in filing civil lawsuits against CashCall and the other defendants. 

“Today, Colorado is collaborating with other states and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to crack down on unscrupulous and abusive online lenders. This is the unveiling of a new state and federal strategy to stop predatory lenders,” said Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. “A seven-year, $10,000 loan cost consumers more than $50,000 in finance charges and because the loans are not legal, they are also not valid,” declared Suthers.

In the state’s case against Western Sky, the company claimed that it was not subject to Colorado’s consumer protection or usury laws because of tribal immunity and preemption. The Denver District Court, however, rejected those claims on April 15, 2013.

Similar actions are being filed today by the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office and Indiana Attorney General’s Office. 

If you’re a fan of antibacterial soaps and other products, you might soon notice some changes to your favorite products. On Dec. 16, the FDA announced in an official release that:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued a proposed rule to require manufacturers of antibacterial hand soaps and body washes to demonstrate that their products are safe for long-term daily use and more effective than plain soap and water in preventing illness and the spread of certain infections. Under the proposal, if companies do not demonstrate such safety and effectiveness, these products would need to be reformulated or relabeled to remain on the market.

Today’s action is part of a larger, ongoing review of antibacterial active ingredients by the FDA to ensure these ingredients are proven to be safe and effective. This proposed rule does not affect hand sanitizers, wipes, or antibacterial products used in health care settings. 

The problem, from the FDA’s perspective, is that many ordinary people might erroneously believe antibacterial soaps don’t merely make things cleaner, but confer actual health benefits compared to “regular” soap — specifically, greater protection against illness.

Not only is there no conclusive evidence to support this, it might actually be the exact opposite: antibacterial products might be harmful. As the press release says, “some data suggest that long-term exposure to certain active ingredients used in antibacterial products — for example, triclosan (liquid soaps) and triclocarban (bar soaps) — could pose health risks, such as bacterial resistance or hormonal effects.”

Long-term exposure

The suspicion that antibacterial products might actually be harmful is not new. There is, for example, already a strong correlation suggesting that the recent rise in numbers of children suffering from asthma or allergies might, paradoxically, be due to the rise of children raised in overly clean and sterile environments: if you don’t mind anthropomorphizing the human immune system you could say that it pugnaciously refuses to ever relax and take it easy, so if there are no real germs or bacteria for it to defend against, it will instead pick fights with dust particles, pollen grains, dander or other innocuous-for-most-people things.

Even worse, the excessive use of antibacterial products (especially antibiotics) is directly responsible for the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Indeed, the FDA’s proposed rule change on antibacterial soap comes only a few days after it proposed a voluntary restriction on the use on non-prescription antibiotics fed to livestock. As Dina Fine Maron noted last week in Scientific American:

“Most of the meat on our dinner plates comes from cows and chickens treated with a battery of drugs that helped them grow quickly in dismal, cramped conditions that would otherwise make them sick.  The drugs are blended into their food and water without any requirement for a veterinary prescription…. [the proposed change] calls for pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily alter their drug labels to exclude growth promotion as a listed use, and that would make it illegal to use the drugs for such growth promotion uses in the future.”

 The FDA also proposed new rules requiring livestock producers to get veterinary oversight before using certain antibiotics on their animals – in effect, to make certain antibiotics for animals prescription-only, as they are for humans.

Too little, too late

Yet many scientists fear the FDA’s sudden interest (or, rather, proposed interest) in widespread use of antibaceterial products might be too little, too late. Maron called the FDA livestock proposals "overdue and utterly insufficient," and last October, Dr. Arjun Srinivasan of the Centers for Disease Control warned that, due to the rapid evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, humanity is fast approaching the “end of antibiotics.”

The more you use an antibiotic, the more you expose a bacteria to an antibiotic, the greater the likelihood that resistance to that antibiotic is going to develop. So the more antibiotics we put into people, we put into the environment, we put into livestock, the more opportunities we create for these bacteria to become resistant. …We also know that we’ve greatly overused antibiotics and in overusing these antibiotics, we have set ourselves up for the scenario that we find ourselves in now, where we’re running out of antibiotics.

We are quickly running out of therapies to treat some of these infections that previously had been eminently treatable. There are bacteria that we encounter, particularly in health-care settings, that are resistant to nearly all — or, in some cases, all — the antibiotics that we have available to us, and we are thus entering an era that people have talked about for a long time.

For a long time, there have been newspaper stories and covers of magazines that talked about “The end of antibiotics, question mark?” Well, now I would say you can change the title to “The end of antibiotics, period.”

We’re here. We’re in the post-antibiotic era. There are patients for whom we have no therapy, and we are literally in a position of having a patient in a bed who has an infection, something that five years ago even we could have treated, but now we can’t. …

As for antibacterial soap and the proposed new regulations, the FDA stressed that its possible qualms to antibacterial soap does not extend to soap or washing in general: hand-washing remains one of the best ways to limit the spread of germs.

Does radiation from wi-fi routers and cell phones have health consequences? That's the question five high school girls in Denmark set out to answer in an experiment that has scientists buzzing. 

There have, of course, been numerous studies trying to determine whether cell phone radiation is dangerous, but wi-fi hasn't received much attention so far. That may change given the results of the biology class experiment by the students at Hjallerup School in North Jutland, Denmark.

The students were having trouble concentrating as they tried to come up with a topic for their experiment. The more they thought about it, the more it seemed a topic that warranted further investigation.

“We all thought we experienced concentration problems in school if we slept with our mobile phones at the bedside, and sometimes we also found it difficult sleeping,” explained Lea Nielsen, one of the five budding researchers, according to the Danish news agency DR.

A simple solution

Testing the effects of cell phone radiation on humans was, wisely, seen as beyond the capabilities of a high school class, so the girls came up with the idea of using simple cress seeds and a wi-fi router.

They took 400 cress seeds and divided them into 12 trays. Six of the trays were placed in one room, six in another. They all got the same amount of water and sunlight over 12 days. The only variable was that six of the trays were placed next to two wi-fi routers.

They waited 12 days, preparing to measure and weigh the different sets of seeds to see if they could find any significant differences. It didn't take much measuring -- the seeds in the trays next to the routers failed to grow. Some mutated. Many died. 

The other seeds, the ones that weren't next to the routers? They were fine, thanks.

“It’s really frightening that there was such a big effect, and we were really struck by the results,” said Nielsen.

The experiment, though simple, has attracted a lot of attention from prominent European researchers.  

“Within the limitations of their understanding and ability, the girls have carried out and documented a very elegant piece of work. The wealth of detail and precision is exemplary, the choice of the right cress is very intelligent, and I could go on,” said Professor Olle Johanson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, DR reported.

Johanson and others are urging the girls to pursue a career in science. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen, but the girls agree one thing's certain: they've stopped sleeping with their cell phones next to their beds.

Among the instructions to passengers aboard commercial aircraft is the requirement to shutdown mobile electronic devices. Flight attendants are known to be unyielding on this point.

Actor Alec Baldwin has famously been booted off an aircraft after getting into an argument with a flight attendant over his still-powered smartphone. But the in-flight ban on mobile devices may be about to come to an end, much to the consternation of flight attendants. 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering a proposal that would permit airlines to install equipment on aircraft that could safely allow passengers to use their smartphones once the aircraft has reached cruising altitude. There is one exception, however. Passengers would still be prohibited from making or receiving phone calls.

Up to individual airlines

The proposal would actually expand the existing default ban on the use of cellphones in-flight to include frequency bands not not included before. However, if an airline chooses to equip its aircraft with specialized onboard equipment that would prevent harmful interference with wireless networks on the ground, the airline would have the ability to enable in-flight wireless broadband access to passengers using their smartphones.

The FCC says the new systems could allow airlines to offer new services to their passengers, including Internet, e-mail, text and potentially voice services. The new technology also would provide airlines with a high level of control over the in-cabin communications environment.

Many passengers may be relieved to learn that the new rules would not allow phone calls – at least not right away. But flight attendants are concerned that if the new rules are adopted as proposed, it's only a matter of time before phone conversations are allowed.

United front

"Flight Attendants and passengers are united on this issue – there should be no voice calls in-flight,”said Veda Shook, Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) International President. “As first responders in the aircraft cabin, Flight Attendants know that this reckless FCC proposal would have negative effects on aviation safety and security.

Shook says the use of cell phones for voice communication poses “unacceptable risks to the security and safety of America's civil aviation system” and must not be permitted.

As currently proposed the rules would only allow passengers to access their data plans on appropriately-equipped aircraft or send and receive texts. But what happens when a passenger using their smartphone to check their email receives a phone call? It will fall to a flight attendant to respond if they take the call and start talking.

'Last line of defense'

“As the last line of defense in our nation's aviation system, Flight Attendants understand the importance of maintaining a calm cabin environment, and passengers agree,” Shook said.

The FCC has prohibited in-flight mobile cellular use since 1991, due to concerns about possible interference to wireless networks on the ground. The FCC now says that the past two decades have produced technology and engineering, as well as specialized onboard systems that can effectively prevent interference with these ground networks on the ground.

The agency notes that foreign airlines have been using onboard mobile access technology over the last five years on flights operating out of Europe and Asia. The FCC said it believes that these systems can be successfully deployed in the U.S.

If the rule is adopted, it doesn't mean all flights will be open to in-flight cellphone use. It would only allow the airlines to install the equipment necessary to offer the data services.

In fact, some airlines already offering in-flight wifi service. However, as of now it can only be accessed using laptop and tablets.

It’s still too early to predict which side will enjoy ultimate victory in the “should we or shouldn’t we ban disposable plastic shopping bags” war, though both sides can honestly claim to have won recent battles.

In California, a state appeals court upheld San Francisco’s citywide ban on plastic shopping bags. (Of course, this does not negate the possibility that a still-higher court might later rule differently.)  Meanwhile, in Colorado, voters in Durango overturned a city council initiative that would’ve mandated a ten-cent-per-bag tax on disposable grocery bags.

The old “paper or plastic?” shopping-bag debate has since yielded ground to the newer “disposable vs. reusable?” argument. The case for taxing or outright abolishing disposable grocery bags almost always rests on environmental or anti-waste concerns: plastic bags fill space in landfills at best, pollute the ocean and kill sea animals at worst; and even for biodegradable and presumably eco-friendly paper bags, there’s no denying that “disposable substances” are inherently more wasteful than “reusable substances.”

Breeding grounds

On the other hand, there’s an ever-growing body of evidence that unwashed reusable grocery bags become breeding grounds for e. coli and other food-borne contaminants. Indeed, in November 2012, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and George Mason University published a research paper titled “Grocery Bag Bans and Foodborne Illness,” with an abstract that noted (in a .pdf link):

Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.

However, these potential health problems were not raised when opponents of the San Francisco ban made their case to the state appeals court; instead, they argued (unsuccessfully) that the city ban contradicts state regulations on retail stores, and that the city should have done an environmental impact study before implementing the ban.

Does your smartphone serenade you daily with all kinds of fun little factoids, love tips and celebrity gossip? If so, you may want to check your monthly statement carefully. Chances are, those little factoids aren't free.

The Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against a massive mobile phone cramming operation that has placed tens of millions of dollars on consumers’ monthly bills without their permission. In its complaint, the FTC seeks to shut down the operation and recover money lost by consumers.

The FTC’s complaint charges that Lin Miao and Andrew Bachman, through a number of companies they owned and controlled, sent theh "fun facts" text messages to consumers, placing monthly subscription fees for these “services” on consumers’ mobile phone bills without their authorization.

The practice, known as mobile cramming, relies on the fact that consumers often don’t closely examine their monthly statements, or many assume that charges are legitimate.

“This case puts another dent in the armor of scammers who use mobile cramming to take advantage of consumers across the country,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. 

Dismissed as spam

According to the complaint, consumers allegedly received text messages with random factoids that they dismissed as spam without realizing they had received them through a paid subscription service they did not knowingly buy. The defendants also allegedly used misleading website offers to obtain valid consumer phone numbers that they used to sign up consumers for their services without their knowledge.

In one instance, a website told visitors they had won free Justin Bieber tickets, which they could claim by filling out an online quiz. Part of the process required consumers to enter their phone number, and while consumers didn’t receive the Justin Bieber tickets, their phone numbers were likely signed up for one of the defendants’ paid services.

The charges continued to appear on consumers’ bills until the consumers noticed them and took action to unsubscribe. The charges, typically $9.99 per month, often appeared on consumers’ bills with inscrutable names like “77050IQ12CALL8663611606” and “25184USBFIQMIG” and in many instances, consumers did not notice the variations in the amount of their bills from month to month.

When consumers did notice the charges, the process of getting a refund was often highly cumbersome. In some cases, consumers could reach representatives of the company, who would promise refunds that never arrived. In other cases, consumers were able to get partial refunds from their phone company, but only for a limited number of months – sometimes far less than the length of time they were billed.

The number of consumers seeking refunds from their phone companies was as high as 40 percent in some months, and some carriers suspended the defendants from placing charges on consumers’ bills.

A healthy and vigorous old age may depend on how you spend your time during middle age, a new Japanese study finds.

Researchers at Tokyo University studied the effect of exercising in middle age on maintaining muscle strength and physical performance later in life.

The researchers studied the prevalence of sarcopenia, a condition associated with aging that's marked by loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength. It leads to adverse outcomes including disability, poor quality of life and premature death.

The study included 1,000 elderly Japanese participants and measured such factors at their handgrip strength, walking speed and skeletal muscle mass.

Analysis showed that exercise habit in middle age was associated with low prevalence of sarcopenia in older age and was significantly associated with grip strength, gait speed, and one-leg standing time after adjusting for age, sex and body mass index. 

The prevalence of sarcopenia was 13.8% in men and 12.4% in women, and tended to be significantly higher with increasing age in both sexes.

The study was presented at a meeting of the International Osteoporosis Foundation in Hong Kong,

October, it turns out, was a pretty good month to be traveling by air.

A new report released by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Air Travel Consumer Report shows there were no long tarmac delays or chronically late flights for two consecutive months or more, and that consumers filed fewer negative reports about airline service.

In addition, to improved on-time performance, airlines posted a lower rate of canceled flights and mishandled baggage than the same period in 2012

The report also includes data on cancellations, chronically delayed flights, and the causes of flight delays, along with consumer service, disability, and discrimination reports received. Also included are reports of incidents involving the loss, death, or injury of pets traveling by air.

The full report is available on the Department of Transportation website.

Volkswagen Group of America is recalling 3,837 model year 2013-2014 Jetta Hybrid vehicles manufactured October 2012, through October 2013, and equipped with a DQ-200 direct-shift gearbox.

Due to gearbox fluid additives, internal components of the gearbox may corrode. The deposits from this corrosion may cause an electrical short and result in a stall-like condition. This sudden loss of power while driving increases the risk of a crash.

Volkswagen will notify owners, and dealers will replace the gearbox oil with a non-corrosive version, free of charge. The recall began on December 6, 2013.

Owners may contact Volkswagen at 1-800-893-5298. Volkswagen's recall number is 34F6/4V.

Doodlebutt of Lehigh Acres, Fla., is recalling about 1,500 Jelly BeadZ Jumbo BeadZ water-absorbing polymer toys.

The soft and colorful products can be mistaken by a child for candy. When swallowed, they can expand inside a child’s body and cause intestinal obstructions, resulting in severe discomfort, vomiting, dehydration and could be life threatening. Similar toys have not shown up on x-rays and needed surgery to be removed from the body.

No injuries or incidents have been reported, but federal officials are aware of one incident with a similar water-absorbing polymer ball product in which an 8-month-old girl ingested the ball that had to be surgically removed, and two cases outside the U.S. with one death.

This recall involves Doodlebutt Jelly BeadZ Jumbo BeadZ and Magic Growing Fruity Fun water-absorbing polymer toys. The toys can absorb from 300 to 500 times their weight in water and can grow up to eight times their original size:

• Jumbo BeadZ toys are marble-sized water-absorbing balls. They were sold in a package consisting of three separate 2.5-inch x 2-inch clear, resealable bags inside a 3.5-inch x 4-inch clear, resealable bag. Each smaller bag had eight to 12 water balls of slightly different sizes. The balls came in clear, blue, red, orange, yellow, green and purple colors. The front of the larger bag had a multi-colored label with the words “Jelly BeadZ,” “Easy to follow directions” and had instructions for use.
• Magic Growing Fruity Fun toys are water-absorbing polymers in the shapes of apples, bananas, butterflies, cherries, grapes, pineapples, roses and strawberries. They were sold in 3.5-inch x 4-inch, clear, resealable bag with seven assorted shapes in it. They came in blue, green, orange, pink, red and yellow. The label on the front of the bag has the words “For ‘Kidz’ of All Ages,” “Jelly BeadZ,” “Bouncy and Beautiful,” “Colorfast,” “Non Toxic,” “Safe for the Environment,” and other words that describe uses for the product. The back of the package has two smaller labels. One label contains instructions for use and the other has a barcode with “XU00EC1JRN” beneath it.

The toys, manufactured in China, were sold at Amazon.com from February 2012, through September 2013, for about $9.

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled polymer products and take them away from small children. Consumers should contact Doodlebutt for a full refund.

Consumers may contact Doodlebutt, collect at (239) 313-9779 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET Monday through Friday or by email at whitmana@live.com.

American Honda Motor Co. is recalling 19,197 model year 2014 Acura MDX AWD vehicles manufactured May 6, 2013, through October 14, 2013.

The bolts that attach the drive shaft to the automatic transmission transfer assembly may not have been properly tightened and could loosen, possibly allowing the shaft to detach. If the drive shaft detaches while the vehicle is being driven. it could cause excessive noise and possibly damage the vehicle, increasing the risk of a crash.

Honda will notify owners, and dealers will inspect and tighten the drive shaft attaching bolts as necessary, free of charge. The recall is expected to begin in December 2013.

Owners may contact Honda at 1-800-999-1009. Honda's recall number is JC8.

Yauk’s Specialty Meats of a Windsor, Colo., is expanding a recall made earlier this month to include an undetermined amount of various meat and poultry products that were produced under unsanitary conditions.

There have been no reports of illness due to consumption of these products.

These products are in addition to the approximately 90,000 pounds of various meat and poultry products that were recalled on Dec. 9, 2013, and carry different brand names.

Products subject to this recall and expansion may be identified by the following brand names and bear the establishment number “Est. 20309” or “P-20309” inside the USDA Mark of Inspection. Products that do not bear the establishment number “Est. 20309” or “P-20309” inside the USDA Mark of Inspection would not be included in this recall.

Products subject to the recall expansion include various meat and/or poultry products from the following brands:

• Four Sisters Farm
• Heart Rock Bison
• High Point Bison
• Luc’s Pizza
• Mountain States Poultry & Meats
• Open A Bar 2
• Rocky Plains Quality Meats
• Schmidt’s Bakery & Deli
• Wag’s Livestock
• Wayne’s Specialty Meats
• Windsor Dairy
• Wyoming Pure Beef
• Yauk’s Specialty Meats

All products being recalled are packaged in retail-ready packaging of various sizes. Each package bears the establishment number “Est. 20309” or “P-20309” inside the USDA Mark of Inspection. The products were produced between April 1, 2013, and Dec. 5, 2013 and can be identified by four-digit Julian dates ranging between 3091 and 3339. The products were sold at the wholesale and retail level in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

Consumers and media with questions about the recall should contact Wayne Yauk at 970-686-9080 .

BMW of North America is recalling 76,565 model year 2006 325i, 325xi, 330i, 330xi sedans and 325xi sports wagons, model year 2007 328i, 328xi, 335i, 335xi sedans and 328i and 328xi sports wagons, model year 2006-2007 525i, 525xi, 530i, 530xi, 550i sedans and 530xi sports wagons, model year 2006 760i sedans, model year 2006-2007 750i, 750Li, and 760Li sedans, and model year 2006 X5 sports activity vehicles, equipped with certain seat types.

The front passenger seat occupant detection mat that determines if and how the passenger frontal air bag should deploy in a crash may fatigue and develop cracks which could lead to a system failure. Should the system fail, in the event of a crash, the front passenger air bag would be deactivated, increasing the risk of personal injury.

BMW will notify owners with an interim notification letter in January 2014 since parts are not currently available. When parts are available, anticipated to be in March 2014, BMW will send a second letter and dealers will repair the occupant detection mat to eliminate the possibility that it may crack, free of charge.

Additionally, owners of model year 2006-2007 3 Series with standard seats, 5 Series with comfort seats, and Z4 models, will receive an extended warranty on their front passenger seat occupant detection mat.

Owners may contact BMW customer relations at 1-800-525-7417 or email BMW at CustomerRelations@bmwusa.com.

Michelin North America is recalling 1,200,000 Michelin LTX M/S tires, size LT225/75R16 115/112R LRE, manufactured from January 10, 2010, through June 23, 2012. The tires are supplied for use as original equipment on certain Ford vehicles, and as replacement equipment on various brand commercial light trucks, full-sized heavy duty vans, small RVs and some large pickup trucks.

These tires could experience tread separation, which can lead to rapid air loss, resulting in a loss of vehicle control and increasing the risk of a crash.

Michelin will notify owners and Michelin dealers will replace the tires free of charge. The recall is expected to begin on January 6, 2014.

Owners may call Michelin Consumer Care Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, or Saturday and Sunday from 8:30am to 4:30pm EST at the following numbers: USA: 1-800-231-5893 (language options: English and Spanish).

If you have a spending problem, chances are it peaks this time of year. There are gifts to buy, entertainment functions to attend and even appeals from a wide range of worthwhile charities.

Some people might not even be completely aware of the problem or the reasons for it. To get finances under control, here are five straightforward steps that may get you moving in the right direction:

Face reality

Yes, this sounds overly simplistic but financial counselors say it is impossible to know where your money is going until you actually look at where it's going. In many cases there is a lot of resistance to tracking expenses because confronting reality may bring about a level of discomfort; either you stop spending you can't afford or you fall deeper into the whole.

But there's power in taking this step. The result is a more careful spending pattern that takes less of a toll on the bank account.

Add up your debt

If you don't know how much money you owe you can't put together a rational budget. But adding up all one's debt can be a brutal exercise. Not only must you confront the total amount you owe, you have to measure the interest you are paying on your debt.

However, confronting this information might spur you to positive action, such as applying for a 0% balance transfer credit card. It also focuses your attention on how you could be using that money if you weren't spending it on interest.

Break bad financial habits

We all could benefit from a more careful use of our money but it is easy to fall into seemingly harmless financial bad habits. Be aware of the small expenditures at the grocery store. At the department store do you find you usually make an “impulse buy” while standing in the checkout line? These little expenses add up.

Put a price on convenience

Busy people don't always have time to do things themselves so they pay others to do them. We're not just talking about mowing the lawn or cleaning the house.

How many meals out do you eat in a week? Even take-out or delivery usually ends up costing more than food you buy at the grocery and prepare yourself. In most cases, the food you prepare yourself is a lot healthier too.

Second-guess your spending

It's good to think before you spend but don't forget about it after the fact. It's a good idea to carefully review monthly bill statements to determine if the expense, especially if you went into debt to make it, was really worth it.

This look in the rearview mirror, with the benefit of hindsight, can give a new perspective on the spending you will do in the future.

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC), whose members provide free or low-cost financial counseling, recently commissioned a survey of consumers that found 80% admitted their worst decisions in life revolved around finances. That beat out mistakes in romance, on the job and with their health.

“It is good sign that consumers recognize and admit their problem,” said Gail Cunningham, spokesperson for the NFCC. “Financial awareness often provides the motivation to jolt a person into taking action that can change the course of their financial life,” continued Cunningham.

Getting out of debt

Recognizing the problem is a big step but a realistic plan of action is required to turning things around. Excessive spending is usually easier to control than excessive debt – you simply buy less or find a cheaper alternative.

Getting out of debt is harder and requires more discipline. Look out for those pitching easy answers – they almost always turn out badly.

This article from our friends at The Motley Fool provides some additional debt-reduction tips that might get you started.

We’re not entirely certain whether this is meant to be an honest-to-goodness consumer food item or more along the lines of a gag gift – but in our defense, neither are the experts at the august Smithsonian, whose Innovations blog asked “Would you eat dinner in a can?”

Introducing “Christmas Tinner,” a meal-in-a-can purportedly offered by the UK-based video-game retailer GAME. (In Britain, canned food is often called “tinned” food; the pun about Christmas Tinner doesn’t really work in American English but it does on the other side of the Atlantic.) The idea is to offer a full multi-course traditional English Christmas dinner in a can, for video gamers who can’t bear to leave their game consoles long enough to enjoy a feast the old-fashioned way.

The Christmas Tinner offers a nine-course meal layered throughout a single can, with “scrambled egg and bacon” on top, and working its way down through two mince pies, turkey and potatoes, gravy, bread and cranberry sauces, stuffing with Brussels sprouts or broccoli, roast carrots and parsnips, and finally, on the very bottom of the can, a layer of Christmas pudding.

There’s a near-limitless number of jokes you can make about the likely quality of a nine-course meal layered into cylindrical form and shoved into a can, and we were about to make some ourselves until we read further in that fascinating Smithsonian Innovations  blog post and learned that the tradition of sneering at canned (or tinned) food has some unhealthy snobbery in its pedigree:

Though quite ingenuous (when you really think about it), the bulk of canning’s maligned reputation, it appears, has much to do with its blue collar roots. Conceived, ironically, by Frenchman Philippe de Girard in 1810 as an inexpensive way to preserve food, cans have traditionally been associated with the urban working class. As the domain of miserly survivalists, canned food and beverages are typically what poorer folks stock up on during times of recession and prolonged economic hardship. The can’s already humbled image, however, isn’t helped any by egregious abominations such as Sweet Sue’s whole chicken in a can and the peanut butter and jelly Candwich, which NPR’s Sandwich Monday described as having a taste that’s “somewhere on the continuum between Play-Doh and Taxicab Air Freshener.”

Time and money

There’s no denying that, assuming you have unlimited time and money, pretty much any fruit, vegetable, meat or other edible tastes infinitely better fresh than it does out of a can. Unfortunately, most of us have only limited time and money and buying and cooking everything fresh every day simply isn’t feasible — especially if you want to keep a food stockpile on hand, not even for “miserly survivalist” reasons but for sensible economic ones: if a non-perishable food you like is on sale for a good price, you can save money in the long run buying extra cans now, since you know you’ll eat them later anyway. But try this with perishables and you'll just waste your money: most of the food will go bad before you or your family get the chance to do anything with it.

And, of course, one need not be a “survivalist” to know that storms can and do sometimes cause lengthy power outages even in the most urban of environments. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recommends all Americans keep a minimum three day’s worth of food and water in their homes — and they don’t mean food that’ll go bad if your refrigerator and freezer quit working.

Incidentally, back in October and November 2011, we (along with more than half the people who lived in Connecticut at the time) went over a week without electricity after a monster blizzard pummeled the state. Luckily, we lived in easy walking distance of a diner that still had power and hot meals—but we couldn’t afford to eat every meal at the diner (especially not after we had to throw away hundreds of dollars’ worth of spoiled food from our fridge and freezer), so we’re very glad we had a good supply of heat-and-serve canned goods on hand, to cook on our little alcohol stove.

However – unlike the people who’ll presumably be adding cans of Christmas Tinner to their emergency stockpiles – even when we made multi-course meals, on the shelf they were one course per can: this can holds the weird-orange-spaghetti course, that can the veggie course, another can of seafood and now it’s time for dessert. But if anyone tries layering sweet corn and tuna fish and neon pasta loops and chocolate pudding altogether in a single can — well, you might be brave enough to try it, but we’re not.

Major wireless carriers have caved to pressure from the new Federation Communications Commission (FCC) chairman and agreed to let consumers unlock their cell phones when their contracts expire.

The new code agreed to by the carriers -- AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and Verizon -- requires them to notify consumers when their phones are eligible for unlocking and to allow them to do so at no charge.

"We believe this agreement will continue to foster the world-leading range of devices and offerings that Americans enjoy today," said Steve Largent, president of CTIA, the wireless industry's trade group. "The robust and differentiated technological ecosystem has brought unparalleled and world-leading benefits to American wireless users, in the form of high-end and affordable devices, post- and pre-paid options, and with the world’s most advanced devices being launched first in the United States."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler -- a highly respected former wireless and cable industry executive and lobbyist -- has let it be known lately that the time has come for carriers to let consumers claim full ownership of their devices.

Currently, when consumers buy a smartphone or a plain old cell phone, they typically pay only a fraction of the actual cost of the phone. The carrier subsidizes the purchase and, in effect, amortizes it over a two- to three-year contract.

It's possible to buy unlocked phones now but they tend to be three or four times more expensive than the subsidized versions, so consumers may not be as thrilled with unlocked phones as one might think.

On the other hand, unlocking makes it possible to price shop among networks and, sometimes, to sign up for international service when traveling overseas at much lower cost than would otherwise be the case.

Largent cautioned there's also the little matter of frequencies. Different carriers use different frequencies and cell phones are generally manufactured to operate on the specific frequencies of the carrier that sells them.

“It is important that consumers know that unlocking devices may not necessarily mean full interoperability since devices that work on one provider’s network may not be technologically compatible with another  wireless provider’s network. Additionally, unlocking a device may enable some functionality of the device but not all (e.g., an unlocked device may support voice services but not data services when activated on a different network)," he said.

It's not clear when CTIA's new code will go into effect.