Thu, Apr 03, 2008
Stupid Banks
Posted to Media category
I can tell I'm a little better this week. Last week during working hours I couldn't stand to listen to the radio, only to one of the Dish Network Classical channels that has only pure wall to wall instrumental music with no DJs. This week I am listening to the radio.
But listening to the radio is a little annoying . There seem to be a lot of advertisements for bank loans against people's houses, which is surprising given the state of the local economy. Also for car deals with what sound to me like really iffy terms.
On the other hand, there seem to be a lot fewer ads for companies that claim they can fix your credit than I remember from a couple of months ago. Possibly they are being overwhelmed.
I happened to watch the late local news yesterday evening, and the opening segment was about foreclosures. On the average one family in 45 in Colorado has had their house foreclosed, and there are areas around Denver where it's running 1 in 30, including a couple of developments where almost every block has at least one foreclosed home (I suspect a collusion by scummy bankers and scammy developers).
One of the houses in my little neighborhood had a sign in front of it from the 'Get It Gone' real estate agency for a few weeks a while back. I suspect that means that we're running one in ten, here. (I can't tell if there is anyone currently living in the house: it is too far from the road and on the other side of the mesa from me.)
I had an ARM for the first couple of years after I bought this house. (It was a complicated deal -- I was making payments directly to the previous owners for a while to cover the down payment, on top of the main loan.) There was one year when interest rates went up from high to obscene (this was in the late 80s), and my payments went up and I spent a year paying basically nothing but interest. I got really good at budgeting, and ate really cheap for a while. And some major repairs (replacing the roof, which was leaking badly... jacking the foundation...) got put off until interest rates came down.
Since I paid off the previous owners (ahead of schedule) and got into a fixed mortgage, I have generally had 15 year fixed mortgages. I have refinanced a couple of times to do major home repairs and improvements and put money into the company, so the end date of my current mortgage is out a ways, but still before the end of my probable working span, and a reasonable chunk of my payment goes to principal, not interest.
I pay a little extra principal every month, too, rounding my payment up to the next hundred. Since June of last year more than half of my actual payment has gone for principal, a few dollars more every month thanks to the winders of compounding. Since January of this year, the interest in each payment has been less than half of my scheduled payment, so even if I cut back to my scheduled payment, more than half of it would be going to principal. It's nice to be on the down-hill slope, so to speak.