Finance
Household Finance
The household debt service ratio (DSR) is an estimate of the ratio of debt payments to disposable personal income. Debt payments consist of the estimated required payments on outstanding mortgage and consumer debt. The financial obligations ratio (FOR) adds automobile lease payments, rental payments on tenant-occupied property, homeowners’ insurance, and property tax payments to the debt service ratio.
Household Finance entered the retailing business on a large scale when it purchased the City Products Corp., owners of the “Ben Franklin” retail chain that had long been operated by Butler Bros. of Chicago. In 1981, Household Finance changed its name to Household International Inc. By 1985, just before it sold the Ben Franklin stores, Household had 28,000 employees worldwide and had about $3.4 billion in annual revenues. At the end of the 1990s, when it was based in suburban Prospect Heights, Household International employed about 4,700 people in the Chicago area.
The outstanding balance of financial assets held by households reached ¥1.536 quadrillion as of Sept. 30, falling by some ¥20 trillion from three months ago due to valuation losses on stocks amid the global market turmoil linked to the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, the Bank of Japan said Monday. The figure was 1.5 percent higher than a year ago and was the third highest on record, according to the preliminary quarterly report by the central bank on the flow of funds.
