The Perfect $46,000 Budget: Learning to Live in California for Under $50,000.
What if I told you that you can live well in California with an income of less than $50,000 a year? A budget of this kind is not some sort of financial bait and switch but a realistic budget that many frugal people use on a daily basis. California has one of the highest costs [...]
Washington Mutual: WaMu and the $239 Billion in Outstanding Loans. $52.9 Billion in Option ARMs. Analysis for the Upcoming Year.
Washington Mutual has been taking a major hit with the current credit and housing crisis. Washington Mutual is down 71% on a year to date basis and with the recent announcement of a $3.3 billion quarterly loss, things will continue to be difficult. Washington Mutual is categorized under a S&L/Savings Bank and even given the [...]
Nearly 1.5 Million Foreclosure Filings in 2008. California Represents 110,000 of Those Foreclosures.
Everyone by now realizes that not all states are facing the same problems with the current housing market. Foreclosures are now accelerating in states that had the highest appreciation in prices and consequently, are causing the most financial damage that is rippling throughout the economy. Foreclosures are the worst sign in any housing market. They [...]
Washington Mutual: WaMu Bank Offering Great CD Rates and Encouraging People to Come in Person?
Washington Mutual, the Seattle based S & L is recently facing market stress with their second quarter earnings report showing that the company lost $3.3 billion. Today the nation’s largest thrift sold off again on concerns that they may be losing some of their sources of funding. The challenging aspect of this is that Washington [...]
Mortgage CSI: Investigating a Countrywide Pay Option ARM under the Financial Microscope.
Unless you’ve actually gone through the hardship of losing your home through foreclosure, it may be difficult to understand the intricacies of how one mortgage loan can upset your entire budget. We get anecdotal stories of people having their loans reset or losing their home but we rarely get a glimpse at the loans. For [...]
Southern California Half Off Sale: 11 Los Angeles County Zip Codes with 50% Year over Year Price Drops.
What once seemed like a total impossibility has occurred in Los Angeles County and in many other cities throughout Southern California. During the decade long housing boom, you would be thought mad if you would guess that any zip code in Los Angeles County would fall 50% in any given year. In fact, during many [...]
Zillow: Concentric Circles of Pain. Examining how the Epi-Center of Housing is Collapsing and the Future of Real Estate Tools.
Zillow once again is showing why it is two steps ahead of those in the housing industry. First, they manage to aggregate an incredible amount of data including tax records and previous sales prices all in one simple to use website. That is the primary function that set things off. Zillow integrates modern mapping technology, [...]
FDIC: Punishing Savers: How the United States Encourages Irresponsible Financial Management. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The FDIC insurers deposits at most institutions up to $100,000 for individual accounts. Many people haven’t put this to the test until the recent collapse and takeover of IndyMac Bank based out of Southern California. The bank when taken over had $32 billion in assets and $19 billion in deposits. $1 billion in these deposits [...]
Stimulus Check Gone with Price of Oil: Running the Actual Numbers Behind the Non-Issue Stimulus Checks.
You may be wondering why the $150 billion stimulus package has had such a minimal impact on the markets and the general economy. The problem is, the entire stimulus package was spent merely keeping up with rising oil prices. Since the start of the year, oil has gone from $95 to $145 to the current [...]
