Rising mortgage rates, mortgage payments and home prices
Rising mortgage rates are on my mind as a potential home buyer. When we first started looking for a home last year, rates were below 4%. Since then, they’ve risen to an average of 4.25% as of last week and have continued to rise this week. This doesn’t mean that rates will continue to rise. Rates have a tendency to move up and down rather quickly as evidenced by the graph below. Recent fed actions have taken the rates higher. The possibility exists that this doesn’t change anytime soon if the solid economic news is any indication. Mortgage rates are loosely tied to the 10 yr treasury rate and that…
Is this the start of the next stock market crash?
The stock market was down today and my office was awash with talk of a stock market crash. “There goes my retirement,” said one of my older coworkers, partially in jest but it was the younger crowd that seemed more worried. I work in a place where no one ever talks about their investments but today that changed. People know that I’m interested in investing but I rarely get any bites when it comes to investment conversations. Suddenly, I was deluged with instant messages from people asking if they should take their money out of the market. “Is this the start of something bad?” I didn’t really know how to…
Time in the Market dividend review – January 2018 – the rise of the bond dividends!
January is a month full of bond dividends! The title makes of this post made me think of a bad financial Terminator movie. “The bond dividends are too powerful! WE MUST STOP THEM!” December, my biggest month of the year is long gone and it’s time to start the new year. These early months are months carried entirely by bond dividends as the title makes it seem. Generally, January is one of my lowest months for dividends. I don’t own a ton of individual stocks and none that pay in January. That means it’s up to my bonds to carry the day. I have recently been buying more of these…