RECENT BLOG POSTS
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I received an e-mail from Ion Web Services that announced a shutdown of services in 30 days. In this day and age, you never know whether or not an e-mail is a legitimate message or whether somebody was hacked. So I did send them a message and they did confirm that it is legitimate. Since so man...
10/22/2011
You don't have to be too ancient to remember the days when your checks would be returned with your statement. Then at some point banks switched over to check imaging. To some traditionalists, that didn't sit too well. The banks said that if you need a copy, come in and they would take care of it...
10/15/2011
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To the eye of the beholder, the photo with green leaves looks natural. Beautiful fall colors call attention to the leaves and autumn, and detract from the actual subject of the photo. And of course no leaves means winter - and photos including trees without leaves call attention to the trees an...
09/20/2011
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In a press release issued on Friday afternoon, the Federal Housing Finance Authority announced that they are filing suits against 17 lenders to recover losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The suits are being filed against not only the financial institutions, but certain officers and some under...
09/02/2011
Sudden changes and shocks to the system can be dangerous. We have all seen the over-reaction to the lending practices of five years ago. Reasonably well qualified buyers are getting the scrutiny that the unqualified buyers should have gotten five years ago. Many would be buyers are ready and w...
07/16/2011
Confusion runs rampant. What is happening with foreclosures? What is the trend in home prices? How about overall inflation? What about the debt crisis? And is the NFL going to play this season? From reading the headlines, there are definitely mixed signals. We all remember how one year after...
07/14/2011
For whatever reason, I get to test the idea of living without a land line. It stopped working a couple of days ago. The folks working on some utility pole wiring down the street said it wasn't them. So I called into the repair center for the telephone company. I could cut a nice chunk of chan...
06/09/2011
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Almost all newer communities in my area have some kind of homeowner association. And they have covenants that not only have rules and standards, but also a means of enforcing those standards. These covenants can be fifty pages long or more. To many buyers, the covenants and restrictions might ...
05/20/2011
No this is not a reality yet. I am not sure how seriously anybody is taking this proposal. But there was a column in the Washington Examiner that proposes allowing penalty-free withdrawals from retirement accounts so long as the proceeds are used to pay down mortgage debt. The author suggests ...
04/25/2011
Everybody is talking about gasoline prices. But how does it impact a monthly budget? This chart might help find some answers. It shows the monthly fuel costs rounded to the nearest dollar based on fuel price per gallon and the miles per gallon for a vehicle. It is based on driving 1000 miles ...
04/22/2011