Better deals for the bank, that is. Ken Harney has a recent article Study Shows Loan Brokers’ Better Side But now a new, independent academic study has concluded the opposite: According to a team of researchers headed by Georgetown University’s Gregory Elliehausen, home mortgage applicants with less-than-perfect credit pay lower financing costs when they obtain …
Author Archives: admin
Passive Asset Allocation
A while ago I talked about Passive Asset Allocation as a way to beat market return as a strategy. So I’m going to write a bit about what it is, why it works, and how to do it. Passive Asset Allocation is very simple at its heart. What you are doing is keeping the balance …
Media a Privileged Class? I Don’t Think So!
Volokh Conspiracy has an excellent article on the state of the law vis-a-vis publicizing past felony convictions. I ask, how can it be permitted for the media to do something that private citizens cannot? Does the media have more freedom of speech than a private citizen? I would submit that the first amendment was clearly …
Continue reading “Media a Privileged Class? I Don’t Think So!”
Loan Qualification Standards – “Loanbusters”
This is definitely not a “Who you gonna call?” I’ve done a couple articles in the recent past on the two ratios, debt to income and loan to value. Nonetheless, there exist a plethora of reasons why someone can be turned down for a loan even though they make it on the ratios. The first …
Continue reading “Loan Qualification Standards – “Loanbusters””
Naming Beneficiaries – Do It, and Keep Them Current
what happen when 401K leave blank on beneficiary Nothing unless you die, and it’s not covered in your will or other documents. Then the state’s intestate code takes effect. Each state has a law for how the estates of those who die intestate will be divvied up. These laws were typically made generations ago, and …
Continue reading “Naming Beneficiaries – Do It, and Keep Them Current”
Mortgages and RAMs in Later Life
“Should People in their sixties take out a mortgage?” The short answer is “Not if you don’t have to.” Now if I suddenly vanish, the explanation will be that the loan industry put a contract out on me. Success in loans, and sales in general, is often attributable to selling people stuff they don’t need. …
What Drives Loan Rates?
Supply and Demand. Now that I’ve given the short answer, it’s time to explain the macro factors behind interest rate variations. But I’m going to keep referring to those first three words. It is a tradeoff between the supply of money and demand for it. The most obvious thing influencing loan rates is inflation. This …
Title Insurance, or Preventing Fifty Ways to Lose Your Money
Yes, I’ve always kind of liked Paul Simon. But this post was inspired by something I ran across from FATCO. And just to make certain you know, it’s fifty ways to lose your money if you don’t have title insurance. You don’t want problems from prior ownerships to interfere with your rights to your property. …
Continue reading “Title Insurance, or Preventing Fifty Ways to Lose Your Money”
The Manifesto in Defiance of Islamism
Stop the ACLU has an open letter (and open trackback) on opposition to Islamism. Among many other online sites, they print the following manifesto: Together facing the new totalitarianism After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious …
How Do You Think About Money?
I am profoundly lucky in that I read “I Will Fear No Evil” in high school. Not an assignment, I just like to read, and Robert A. Heinlein has always been one of my favorite authors. A very few pages into the book, he has one of his characters toss off two fantastically good pieces …