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. […]
How come everyone else can refinance … and you can’t? If you read the news reports or listen to ads, you might think that every homeowner in the entire United States has recently refinanced into a mortgage rate so low that it practically amounts to a complete giveaway. That idea is making a lot of […]
A customer was buying a new car, and she could either take a zero percent loan from the dealer for 72 months or get a $9,000 rebate on the purchase price. She didn’t know how to make up her mind as to which would be the better deal for her, and actually called her bank […]
A married couple came to see me at the bank. They were deeply concerned about the wife’s father, a beloved and very proud gentleman who was spending about $2,500 a month responding to direct mail requests from charities both well-known and completely obscure. He could afford the donations and seemed to enjoy making them. But […]
