I have to hand it to my credit union. Their marketing is pretty good! They advertised an unsecured loan special, good through today, at rates starting at 7.5% for up to 12 months for amounts between $500 and $2,500. It ends today presumably so that people can have the money in hand to shop Black … Read more
Fixed-rate mortgages are almost as cheap as the teaser rates on adjustable-rate mortgages of a few years ago. The average rate on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage for today (November 15th, 2011) stands at 2.97%. (Note: It was at the time I wrote this post. Rates change all the time.) Rates haven’t been this low … Read more
Our new (to us) car is now in our driveway. Pretty much everything is settled with this vehicle, and we sold the old one that had the broken transmission. We continued “money lessons for kids” with our daughter by showing her a few — OK, two dozen — $100 bills and a cashier’s check with … Read more
(And no, the answer is not to give $50/week allowance to a six year old!) Last week our minivan’s transmission bit the dust. (Thankfully it bit the dust in our driveway.) Over the next couple of days my wife and I discussed what to do: whether to fix our car, whether to buy a new-to-us … Read more
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), with the Federal National Mortgage Association (“Fannie Mae”) and the (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) (“Freddie Mac”), today announced a number of changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) designed to increase the number of borrowers eligible for refinancing at-risk home mortgages. One of the big deals of … Read more
The Alexa Toolbar has some interesting headlines come across it. It draws on Reddit fairly often. The submitter for this article now has about 1600 net votes from describing their experience calling up a representative at a bank to contest their new monthly service fee. It’s clear that the representative could use some education in … Read more
You may have heard of cash-for-gold businesses — turn your gold into cash. The procedure for getting cash for your gold at these kinds of places goes like this: Request an envelope. Drop your gold jewelry in the envelope and mail it to them. They send you a check. Easy peasy, right? It is. The … Read more
Our church has been doing a study on money in the adult Sunday school classes through a video series from Crown Ministries. Today’s lesson talked about racking up lots of credit card debt and expecting others to take care of you. (Oh wait … sorry … that was the pamphlet I saw for FROWN Ministries.) … Read more