A leading mortgage broker Australian Finance Group, who says it helped secure finance for as much as 10 per cent of the Australian mortgage market, says that Westpac’s decision to raise its interest rate by 45 basis points or 20 basis points in excess of the official rise in interest rates, resulted in rivals picking up market share at its expense. <
Several times in 2009, I came across this thoroughly interesting infographic, originally from VisualEconomics.com:
You can click on the image to see a larger version of it over at Visual Economics.
The picture depicts how the average American family spends their income based on Department of Labor data.
What can you do when you don’t have health insurance and you can’t pay your medical bills that have been sent to a collections agency?
Well, that’s the question recently fielded by Bankrate.com’s Justin Harelik.
The reader’s mother has been dealing with bills for her open-heart surgery that were sent to collection in 1996! She worked with the collectors to lower the monthly payments to something she could afford on her social security payments, but now the agency is expecting her to pay the full $20,000 outstanding balance. This seems incredibly unfair, since she’s paying them in good faith and they are cashing the checks, but apparently it is perfectly legal for them to do.
Here are the 4 options laid out by Mr. Harelik:
ANGRA DOS REIS, Brazil – A rain-loosened slab of hillside collapsed on three houses and an upscale waterfront lodge after New Year celebrations at an island resort near Rio de Janeiro, killing at least 17 people, Brazilian authorities said.
About 120 rescuers scrambled through mud and around toppled trees and large rocks to search for other survivors of the mudslide that also injured at least 10 people early Friday. Police helicopters and navy vessels were helping in the rescue efforts.
“People had never seen so much rain in this region,” Rio de Janeiro’s vice governor, Luiz Fernando Pezao, told Globo TV, and he indicated he feared the death toll could rise. “
What a year it’s been!
As the history books close on 2009, I thought it might be nice to take a look back on the topics that were hot on Simple Debt-Free Finance over the past year.
2009 saw a lot of talk about the future of the 401(k). It seems only natural, given that it is one of the major means of saving for retirement for many American workers who had just seen those savings drop like a stone in the 2008 stock market crash. A lot of the talk was centered around ways to “fix” the 401(k) when it isn’t broken. This bo
Hi 20SF’ers. This will be the final post of 2009. It’s been a fantastic year (the second full year), and I’m very excited about where things are heading with the site in 2010.
20somethingfinance has grown to well over 2,000 subscribers and 50,000 monthly visits (and it keeps doubling every few months). Thanks to all who have helped build a strong community here at 20somethingfinance in 2009.
For 2009, here’s a month-by-month breakdown that includes some of my personal faves and the most commented on posts. If you’
This is the third and concluding article in a series that covers the perverse government bailout of AIG. The first piece covered how the insurance industry operates and where problems can arise, the second dove into the moral hazard of the AIG bailout, and this third piece will address not only the risks, but the history of over-the-counter [OTC] trading and what should be done to resolve its weaknesses. I do not believe that OTC trading should go away entirely. OTC trading has served a purpose for specialized transactions or when specific financial instruments are first traded.
When discussing over-the-counter instruments we are not talking about stocks trading via pink sheets or OTC because their price has dropped below exchange listing criteria.