If you walk away from a mortgage you don’t want any more, what are the consequences? I wrote about the moral and credit implications in a previous post. A reader emailed to ask about the federal tax implications. “In my state, the banks send a notice saying that you owe taxes on the unpaid debt,” [...]
The financial reform law includes tough new mortgage regulations, to stop the deceptions (and self-deceptions) that have driven millions of homeowners into foreclosure. Here’s how the market will change in 12 to 18 months, when the new rules start to take effect:
1. The fees you can be charged at closing will be capped at 3 [...]
Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren dreamed up the idea of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress authorized as part of Wall Street reform. She campaigned for it tirelessly and understands the issues better than anyone else. She’s the most qualified person, by far, to become its first director – the one that will [...]
Wall Street costs too much. “It’s an extractive industry”, says Vanguard founder John Bogle. “The investor feeds at the bottom of what is now the tremendously costly food chain of investing.”
In his new book, “Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life,” he cites what might be an investment banker’s view of the national economic [...]
Target-date retirement funds took a bad rap during the 2008-09 market meltdown. Some investors apparently thought that they wouldn’t lose any money in the funds or that they were sure to be safe at the target date.
Misunderstandings like these show the need for more information about how target funds work. The Securities and [...]
