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Mortgage rates remain at record lows – refinance ’em if you’re credit’s good!
Per a USA Today article which references the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Survey: Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac says the average on the 30-year loan was 3.66%. That’s unchanged from last week and the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s. The average rate on the 15-year mortgage, a popular refinancing option, slipped to 2.94%. That’s down Read more
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Tax Simplification – Harvey Golub op-ed piece in the WSJ
Harvey Golub’s op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal on June 14, 2012: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303768104577462353639535464.html?mod=googlenews_wsj Harvey Golub: A Simple Tax Code Is a Fair Tax Code The top 1% pays more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90%. But the system is biased toward the powerful in other ways. [some bit from the article:] The Read more
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Ferri: Star Fund Managers and Flame Out Rates
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2012/06/11/star-fund-managers-and-flame-out-rates/ A nice quick read with some supporting numbers regarding the likelihood that active fund managers who have outperformed their indexes in the past will do so again. Not surprisingly, fewer continue to outperform than one would even expect from sheer dumb luck. This, of course, further strengthens the case for low-expense, passive, index or Read more
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Counting on an Inheritance? Count Again.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303990604577370001234970954.html?mod=googlenews_wsj From the Wall Street Journal on Monday, June 11, 2012: Worth the read. Great reminder that (a) you should probably not be planning on an expected inheritance to take care of your retirement savings for yourself; (b) you should seriously be having a frank talk with your parents about their finances; (c) your siblings Read more
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50 Years of Government Spending, In 1 Graph
Thanks to NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/05/14/152671813/50-years-of-government-spending-in-1-graph Note that if inflation comes along, entitlements automatically go up more. And if interest rates go up to deal with the inflation, interest spending could easily double or triple pretty quickly. Of the $10.4 trillion in debt held by the public, $1.6 trillion is in T-bills (paying pretty much no interest Read more
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Mutual funds and managers to avoid
Some words of wisdom from Roger Nussbaum http://www.washingtonpost.com/the-mutual-funds-and-managers-to-avoid/2012/05/04/gIQAEfIc1T_story.html Note especially his mention, without spending much time on it, the issues of investment expenses. Read more