A few weeks ago, a customer emailed to ask if I would consider writing a column about the pitfalls of credit cards for young people, especially college students. He said he had a feeling his kids weren’t hearing him and he thought they might get the message if they saw it in the paper. “This […]
This is not about delayed gratification, although delayed gratification can be a very useful way to build your wealth — especially when the “delay” causes you to re-think an expenditure and ultimately forgo the “gratification.” No, this is about something else — specifically the idea of being willing to delay and experiment before making a […]
A customer recently made an appointment to speak with me. A woman in her 70s, she had a home equity line with a big national bank and she’d used it wisely for many years. Her home equity line was coming up for renewal in 2019 and the interest rate was going to be increasing quite […]
Most homeowners think it’s going to be pretty easy to qualify for a home equity line of credit — and generally it is. You already have a home. You probably already have qualified for a mortgage. As long as you have equity in your home and you have maintained your credit rating/scores, you should expect […]
A few weeks ago, I came across a particularly annoying click-bait pop-up ad from a well-known online lender. “Do the math (the banks wish you wouldn’t do),” their ad said. In Australia, where free speech laws are less absolute than they are here in the United States, it is illegal for a business to “make […]
This month’s Smart About Money is featured in the Canton Citizen’s annual Financial Fitness Guide, included with the March 1 edition. That was the headline of an article in The Washington Post in January. Considering that millions and millions of homeowners have home equity lines and loans (and love them), it was pretty alarmist. “Did […]
I recently heard a story about a businessperson who discovered that the check a client had sent them had been intercepted somehow and cashed by a stranger in another state. This story had an odd twist. When the businessperson reported that the check had never been received, the company that had written the intercepted check […]
At a recent banking conference, a banker from the north shore told me about a particularly unfortunate situation she had run into. A young man came into her bank to cash a check. He did not have an account at that bank, but the check was from an account holder. Apparently, everything about this young […]
Up until about the mid 1980s, a homeowner who wanted to borrow against the equity in their home had to take out what was known as a “second mortgage.” And there was a stigma against second mortgages. Then some enlightened bankers started thinking about homeowners and their equity differently. And so two of the most […]
These big data breaches — like the recent Equifax hack — are very frustrating. Especially when they happen to huge companies that you’d think would have multiple layers of systems in place to protect themselves and their customers’ information. And why did it have to be one of the credit reporting agencies that got hit, […]
