Truth In Lending Act - TILA

  

Categories: Banking, Credit

Who reads a credit card statement? It comes in the mail; you look at the minimum payment. You send a payment for that amount and go back to looking for a deal on adult-sized footie pajamas on Amazon.

Credit card companies (and other lenders) know that people don't really read the fine print. Theoretically, they could sneak anything in there and we'd still sign. The "Literal Arm and a Leg" clause, which uses your limbs as collateral for your jet ski loan. The "First Born" stipulation, which pledges your first-born child to eternal servitude in the sweatshop the credit card company runs to bang out new cards.

Helping to prevent this, we have the Truth in Lending Act. First passed in 1968, it forces lenders to let you know the details of the loan you're signing. It requires that lenders (including credit card companies) inform you about the costs related to the loan (the rates you're paying) and how many of your limbs are included in the deal.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is the Fair Credit Reporti...4 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop what is the Fair Credit Reporting Act? alright so think

00:08

old the Englande it's 1604 and your family is still working the barley [Family carrying barley]

00:13

fields because great-great-grandfather smeltwagon wasn't very good at rolling

00:20

the bones he lost a lot of money so yeah great-great grandpappy ended up with

00:24

gambling losses getting him into massive debt with over 97 farthings worth of [farthings drop into a bag]

00:29

debt accumulated after 20 years of bad gambling bones so in England well they

00:35

would either torture you until you found a way to pay off your debts either

00:38

legally or not or they would just throw you your family and your progeny into

00:43

essentially a work camp for generations and in fact it was this unfairness that

00:49

led to the notion of no taxation without representation in our own Constitution [US constitution appears]

00:54

so as the world turned the notion of credit fairness actually became a thing

00:59

and eventually the Fair Credit Reporting Act was established in 1970 and of

01:03

course it gave rise to the store Credit Reporting Act first adopted by Sears

01:07

where America well used to shop yeah I remember Sears catalog that was

01:12

called the Amazon back in the day all right with enormous abuse of the

01:15

credit system the haves or if the educated or the wealthy were able to get

01:19

away with nearly everything just shy of murder while the uneducated well they [Arrow points to uneducated people]

01:25

suffered the key driver in credit or an individual's access to borrowing money

01:29

revolves around the manner or form in which their credit scores were reported

01:35

and calculated in all that stuff so if you're educated you kind of know how to [Students playing video games]

01:39

game the system right and in fact with no structure behind credit reporting the

01:43

system was simply not trustworthy and it had to be codified or made into cookie

01:47

cutter nuggets each of which treated those seeking a credit score equally and

01:52

fairly individuals were able to petition to correct bad information that had

01:57

somehow leaked into their system like inaccurate information like it would do

02:01

that and sit there and haunt you for decades they were also allowed to

02:04

actually access their score and amazingly in the past people did not [Credit score rises]

02:08

necessarily have the right to view their own credit score how

02:12

weird and finally bad credit stopped being a cattle brand that lived with an

02:17

individual for their entire life new amendments allowed people to remove bad

02:22

credit annotations by paying off their debts along with the penalty and then

02:26

having good credit for three four five years after which time the negative

02:30

frowny faces were removed from their credit ratings sheets

02:34

so yeah credit reporting was finally fair and people were finally able to you [Cattle brand credit score appears]

02:40

know go in for cattle brand removal that's gotta hurt...

Up Next

Finance: What is the Equal Credit Opportunity Act?
6 Views

What is the Equal Credit Opportunity Act? Signed into law during the Nixon-Ford era in 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act is essentially an ant...

Finance: What is the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act Of 2006?
4 Views

What is the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act Of 2006? As signed by President George W. Bush in 2006, the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act required th...

Finance: What is the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act?
1 Views

What is the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act? The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is the set of rules that debt collectors follow. These rules...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)