Pocketmint

Tag: banks

1. Mortgages: knowing when to walk away

   12 March 2012

   In January 2011 Jak and I made a bold and controversial financial decision that would send our lives down a sharply different path. We decided to default on our mortgages. For background, you should read my earlier post about buying our current house in 2006, around a year before the Seattle housing market peaked and […]

2. Retrospective rubbernecking at the subprime mortgage disaster

   17 November 2011

   As I mentioned once before, I have a block on ‘formal’ book reviews, so consider this just a friendly little chat, okay? I trust Stacy’s opinions implicitly, particularly on matters of journalism, so when in passing she praised Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, the very next thing I did was hit the library web site […]

3. Move your money and bump your interest rate too

   1 November 2011

   A lot of people are moving their money this week, either because of outrage at the imposition of yet another fee, or due to a general realization that customers tend to get better treatment from small not-for-profit credit unions than from gigantic banking corporations. In tangentially related news, interest rates seem to be exploring Zeno’s […]

4. Risk-free high-yield savings option

   17 June 2009

   When is a CD not a CD? When it’s a savings account in disguise. Traditionally, certificates of deposit have offered a trade-off: in return for the bank’s guarantee of a fixed interest rate, you promise to leave your money with the bank for a specific term. If you renege and withdraw your funds early, you […]

5. Put that money where it belongs, dammit

   8 June 2009

   Here’s yet another reason why checking online account information regularly is a good idea: My regular monthly electronic payment on our second mortgage went out to Bank of America on June 3. On June 4 I manually sent an extra $2000 against the principal. On June 7 I checked our mortgage accounts online. Turns out […]

6. Now hiring. Whoo hoo!

   16 September 2008

   A job-matching site which has my resumé on file just emailed me an alert about a new position for which I was supposedly a near-perfect match. I dutifully clicked through and started reading. Job description sounded good, and then I got to the ‘About the Company’ section: Seattle — home to gourmet coffee, grunge, and […]

7. Should we worry about WaMu? and other disasters

   16 September 2008

   Sorry for the recent silence; I’ve been having a rough couple of weeks on the Life front. No financial crises, though, at least not yet! Thanks for all the recent comments — it cheers me up to see so many people reading. This week got off to an interesting start for us with the early-buzzard […]

8. WaMu ad campaign supports gay couples

   7 August 2008

   As I was searching through Flickr photos that might illustrate the last post, I came across a couple of a WaMu bus stop ad campaign that I didn’t know about. One photo is from New York City, the other from West Hollywood. Each depicts an enormous checkbook holding personalized Washington Mutual checks. The joint account […]

9. Customer goodwill worth more than high interest rates

   7 August 2008

   J.D. at Get Rich Slowly recently opened up a discussion about chasing interest rates on savings accounts. The range of comments are pretty interesting, but the one recurring theme is that most people are willing to stay with a slightly lower rate as long as they’re happy with the service and convenience. I guess I […]

10. Double exposure: risks of working in the financial industry

    14 July 2008

    If you have any money in the stock market right now, you’ve probably noticed a distressing trend over the past few months. I only check my retirement account balances once a month, and I can’t help being pained when the decline in net worth measures thousands of dollars. Compounding this is the fact that, because […]