Jun 24

Okay, I procrastinate. We all know this. I’ve been doing it all my life. I keep saying I’ll break the habit… someday. So for years I’ve put off starting an IRA because I always figured it would cost too much or be too much of a hassle.

But I came across a post yesterday that I wanted to share with everyone; How to open an IRA for $1 in 15 minutes. Talk about easy. Given how great compounding interest is, you could open one for your kids with $5 in it and they could be millionaires by the time they retired.

Anyway, it’s a good article, well worth the read.

Feb 21

In an effort to encourage everyone (myself included) to learn more about the stock market I have setup a fantasy
investing game on Investopedia’s Investing Simulator and invited all my friends. So, why am I posting this? Well, if you’re reading my blog, then I consider you a friend (yes, I am that desperate for friends, but that’s the topic of another post).

The competition will begin on March 1st and last until March 31st. Everyone starts off with $100K in fantasy money and whomever has the most at the end of the month wins. Yes, options, shorts, and margins will be allowed.

Click here to join the competition

For those who aren’t familiar with The Investopedia Simulator, it is a stock market simulation where you
can manage a fantasy portfolio and learn to invest without risking your hard-earned money.

Feb 12

Nearly a year ago I did a post about Prosper where I proclaimed the greatness of the concept and was really excited about the company.

Today I received an email marking the one year anniversary of the company. After reading the email I must say that my fears did hold true. In my original post I had asked one of the founders, John Witchel, if the company what measures they were going to take to ensure the site was not overrun with requests from people with poor credit. To which Mr. Witchel responded saying that every lender has their own tolerance of risk and how that wouldn’t be a problem and so on so forth. However, in today’s email Prosper announced that borrowers with a “credit score below 520, and borrowers with an NC (No Credit) rating, will no longer be able to borrow on Prosper given their low appeal to lenders relative to the costs and resources required to process their listings.” To this I ask with tounge in cheek, “What happened John?”

In addition to excluding the really bad credit loans, they go on to say “Not surprisingly, it costs more to list and service loans from borrowers with lower credit grades. To better align our fees with these costs, we are raising the closing fee for E and HR borrowers and the servicing fee for lenders on loans made to B, C, D, E and HR borrowers.” Thus everyone with a credit score below 720 will have to pay more. This change here brings back bad memories of the predatory lending practices I saw when I used to work in the mortgage industry.

I’m sure these changes will help get rid of a large percentage of the loans listed on Prosper making it easier for lenders to find loans suitable to their tastes. And I’m sure it will lower load on their servers and decrease bandwidth usage. But, in the end, seems the the old saying about banks applies here as well; in order to borrow money you have to first prove you don’t need it.

Aug 22

I’m always tossing business ideas around with friends and family and often times we reject different ideas because they’re too stupid, crazy, illogical, etc. Well, I just came across a list of the Top 10 Dumbest Online Business Ideas. The noteworthy thing about these ‘dumb’ ideas is the fact that they made their creator a millionaire. So take a moment and look through them. Maybe that last dumb idea wasn’t so bad after all.

Apr 21

I’ve been hearing a ton of talk about interest only mortgage lately. I finally took the time to write up a little primer on what they are and the pros and cons of them. Feel free to ask questions and make comments.

Interest Only? | Mortgage Knowledgebase

I hope to take the time to write up a few more articles on this because it seems that some unscrupulous loan officers are pitching some new combinations such as GPM / interest only products and they’re not explaining the risks of such loans. As usual, everything in the name of the almighty commission check and people are confused.

« Previous Entries