Growin' Up Gregory

Over the past week, mortgage rates hit an all-time low...again.  If you didn't get in, don't fret.  They've only crept back up slightly.  For some, it makes refinancing at these ridiculous rates not as beneficial.  But for others, they still stand to save significant amounts of money by refinancing.  My recommendation - examine your budget, find an expert mortgage loan officer, and do some math. What's Your Goal? What's your goal from refinancing?  Do you just want to say you have a stupid low rate?  To be honest, that was part of the appeal for me - I felt like it would confirm that I was an expert.  Never mind the part that I pulled the trigger last August and refinanced then when I thought they had bottomed out.  We can watch trends and make guesses, but none of us inside or outside the industry knows exactly what rates will do in the future. Are you looking for monthly savings (lowering your payment) or long-term savings (reducing th...

I wrote the other day about if you should or shouldn't escrow. If you choose not to, here's a method my wife and I have been using for a few years to help ensure those annual or semi-annual bills don't break the bank...or ruin Christmas. 1. Calculate your annual or irregular expenses - hashtag # house hashtag # tax & insurance, car tax & hashtag # insurance , life insurance, etc. House Tax = $900 House Ins = $720 Car Tax = $300 Car Ins = $900 Life Ins = $1,000 Total = $3,820 2. Divide that total by 12 = $320 (rounded). I also like to keep this on a spreadsheet so I can update it every year or so. 3. Set up a separate interest bearing hashtag # savings account for your "escrow." Note: this should NOT be the same as your regular savings account since this money is already allocated for a special purpose. Plus, instead of the hashtag # bank earning interest of your money, you do! 4. Now comes the hard part, being disciplined enough to put that amount into...

As many of you know, I work in banking.  Not investment banking, I primarily deal with various loan types to individuals and businesses.  But I do have a pretty solid understanding of interest rates, markets, and long and short term costs and returns.  That being said, my expertise in the area of investing consists of checking my quarterly 401k statement to make sure that it has more money now than it did three months ago.  If you want investment advice, I can give you some names of people I trust and are knowledgeable, just not mine. A month or so ago the cryptocurrency market was going wild.  Bitcoin and other popular cryptocurrencies were all the rage, and there are some people who made tons of money on it...assuming they sold at the right time.  And there are others who will stubbornly ride out this most recent drop off in order to be able to tell all their friends they were "geniuses" for holding on to the crypto investment. But this post isn't abo...