Obama’s mortgage bailout: still nothing for the responsible

If you made responsible financial decisions over the last several years and were hoping there may be something in Obama’s mortgage bailout for you, keeping hoping. As far as I can see there is nothing for my family in the bailout (even after my wife’s layoff earlier this week), and you’ll likely come to the [...]

Warning: Don’t depend on any personal finance advice from this blog!

The economic events of the last several months, and the “response” to those events by our government have been troubling me greatly recently. For a while it didn’t make any real sense to me as to why it was so troubling. I have what I consider to be a good job, modest expenses, considerable savings, [...]

Scam Week: National Service of Process (NSP)

In our second installment of Scam Week, we go into the seedy underworld of abusive collection agencies. Now let me say that I fully support the collection agencies that act in an ethical and legal manner. In this country I feel a lot of times we discount the concept of personal responsibility, and legitimate collection [...]

Now is the time to refinance to a fixed rate

Unless you have been living in a cave, you are probably aware of the Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate cuts. While it doesn’t have a direct effect on mortgage rates, recent weeks have seen some of the lowest fixed interest rates on mortgages in years. When rates are this low, there isn’t much of a [...]

The Interest Rate Cut and the Death of the App-O-Rama

As most everyone is aware now, the Federal Reserve this week dropped the Federal Funds rate by 75 basis points (0.75%). This is great for borrowers, but not so great for savers. Several online banks have already dropped their high yield online savings accounts drastically in response to the cut. This is on top of [...]

Shelter from the Mortgage Storm? Try Your Credit Union

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you are probably very aware by now of the issues around mortgage lending. If not, go take a look at your brokerage account and try to come up with another explanation the balance number is so much lower than it was before. As [...]

Online Personal Finance Tutorials from the LDS (Mormon) Church

It isn’t my intention to make my religion part of my personal finance blog, but I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more popularly known as the Mormon Church. One of the topics that has been mentioned on several occasions by the leaders of our church is prudent resource [...]