If you’re struggling with your finances — and many people are — December is the perfect time both for reflection and for considering new ideas to bring you closer to where you want to be in 2013. While it’s not presented as an “improve your finances” book, Do One Thing Different: And Other Uncommonly Sensible […]
An 81-year-old man recently came in to talk about taking out a 30-year mortgage on his house in Canton. Given his age, you might be thinking, “What?” But times change. Financial tools change. And the way people can make use of those tools changes too. Some background: Up until about 1985, a homeowner might have […]
A gentleman called and asked if he could get an “objective second opinion” on “something his bank had done.” I said, “Sure.” Here’s what happened: He had received an email from a “mystery shopper company” — and there’s a reason why that’s in quotes — asking if he’d like to participate in their regional program […]
First, let’s define what we mean by a “money mistake.” There are events no one can anticipate or fully prepare for — a life-changing tragedy, a major economic catastrophe like the Great Depression, even lesser economic disruptions, like the current Federal Reserve policy of holding down interest rates (which is hurting many seniors) or a […]
A friend whose daughter is turning 13 asked me what I, as a banker, would recommend he and his wife could do to make sure she had solid “money/finance” confidence before she legally becomes an adult at 18. It’s a great question. Community bankers helping customers (of all ages!) work their way out of a […]
All the pre-holiday heavy emphasis on buying-buying-buying got me thinking about a gift people can give themselves and their families — something precious, rare, and very, very valuable. Being debt-free. Does that mean being some sort of Grinch and not buying any gifts? Does that mean never using credit cards again and always paying cash? […]
Right now, we are seeing one of the country’s largest banks in the news on a regular basis for all the wrong reasons: government investigations; a disastrously failed acquisition; higher and higher fees; foreclosure litigation; branches possibly closing; monster layoffs. Does this mean that the bank is in trouble? Absolutely not! What does it all […]
A woman from Canton came in looking for advice. She’d bought a condo in 2008 and was living there happily, but seeing the deals that her friends were getting on nicer properties, she wanted to trade up. She could easily afford the mortgage on the properties she liked. All she had to do was sell […]
Although the real estate market here in eastern Massachusetts has generally held up better than in other parts of the country, there are still plenty of people who are struggling with mortgages and many who are underwater on their loans — meaning they owe more than they could currently hope to sell their home for. […]
Media reports tend to highlight the tragic reasons why people run through their life savings, usually involving a catastrophic accident or other sadly life-changing event. Bankers know that those cases are extremely rare. Most of the people we see who have money trouble actually have a much more common problem. Specifically, they spend too much. […]
