Affordable Seconds News Today

Today's Fed meeting announcement is the last one until September 20. Mortgage rates, of course, are prone to moving around even without the Fed’s direction. Meanwhile, the second quarter earnings from lenders are of great interest to warehouse banks and investors (including Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae). Those counterparties are contractually limited as to what they can do with companies that are not making money and have seen their net worth erode over the months and quarters. Ther...

Tony H. writes, “I just switched my 30-year home mortgage to ‘student loan.’ Follow me for more financial advice.” I have been fielding questions about the impact of student loan forgiveness on credit (probably won’t impact credit scores) but also whether the forgiven debt is taxable (not at the Federal level, but Forbes thinks it may be at the state level in some places). While the government is intervening, wouldn’t it be nice if someone put a cap on c...

W.C. Fields said, “Money will not buy happiness, but it will let you be unhappy in nice places.” Unfortunately, many people have much less of it, and here’s a quiz to start the week. What are -68 percent, -66 percent, -60 percent, -40 percent, -13 percent, and -2 percent? They are all the stock performance since their initial public offering, or SPAC merger, of well-known companies in the residential mortgage business. And the numbers aren’...