Borrowing
You Deserve a Luxurious Vacation…Let Me Finance It For You
Today, I receive an email from CitiFinancial. This isn’t rare, being they send email to current and past customers at an annoying frequency. As you can tell from the text of the email (pasted below), Citi is offering a loan in order to finance a vacation. We all know financing a vacation is a horrible idea, [...]
Pay Off Your Mortgage By Age 65
Being a recent first time home-buyer, my final mortgage payment is comical to think about. And this is exactly why many people don’t think about actually paying off their mortgages, ever. The Washington Post recently reported that, “more than 55 percent of boomers who have mortgages do not plan to pay their mortgages off until [...]
Prosper.com Concerns
Prosper.com has some interesting notions to it that make it unique in the borrowing/lending market. If you have some extra money, you can lend it out and make a return (hopefully) or if your credit is bad, you can get a loan for a badly needed loan that you might not get otherwise, due [...]
Top Financial Leader Thinks Second Wave of Foreclosures Coming July 1
“We have a wave of foreclosures coming after July 1, which may make the first wave look small by comparison.” - Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
Earlier this week, Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, expressed his less than enthusiastic financial forecast for the coming months during a Securities [...]
How Much Were Your Closing Costs?
Do you remember closing on your first home loan? You sit down in a small room with your realtor, the seller, the seller’s realtor, and a title agency. The agency plops a huge stack of documents in front of you and one by one, you sign your paychecks away. If you are [...]
Trading in For a Hybrid Could Be Costly
With gas prices averaging close to $4/gallon, many car owners are considering trading in their gas hogs for a hybrid vehicle. Hybrids of course have the potential to get upwards of 40 miles a gallon (mpg), versus the 15-25 mpg that many of us get with our current vehicles. The savings with the [...]
Can I Save My Home?
As we all sit around, glued to our bank accounts, waiting for our stimulus check, the country is hurdling towards an unknown that won’t officially be settled until July. Once the magic “R” word comes out, I would imagine that there is going to be a new shock to the system as a whole. [...]
Investing in Real Estate vs. Stocks - Which Is Best?
For years, the United States Government has encouraged citizens to become homeowners, primarily with tax incentives like deductions from mortgage interest, mortgage points, and property tax. However, if the U.S. Government was held as a fiduciary by encouraging home-ownership, our tax breaks might subside based off recent numbers highlighted in a recent Washington Post article [...]
Simple Ways to Boost Your Credit Score
Improving and maintaining your credit score is one of the best ways to qualify for lower interest rates, acquire credit, and reduced insurance premiums. However, the majority of us don’t keep a close enough eye on our credit scores and frankly probably don’t understand them. How your credit score is actually determined is [...]
Reverse Mortgages Are Tempting But Costly
Homeowners – especially those creeping closer to retirement – may find that the majority of their savings is in their homes equity. Arguably, this is not the ideal way to prepare for life after work, but to those who rely on their homes equity now, find themselves with multiple ways to spend that equity [...]
