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Mortgage rates climb uphill

March 16th, 2012

Mortgage rates jumped alongside a positive employment reports and increasing bond yields last week, Freddie Mac said in its most recent mortgage report.

According to Freddie Macs Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ending March 15, 2012, both fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages saw average interest rates move higher.

In this latest data, average rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages rose to 3.92 percent from 3.88 percent the previous week.

An upbeat employment report for February caused U.S. Treasury bond yields to increase over the week and mortgage rates followed, Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist at Freddie Mac, said in a statement.

Despite the week-over-week increase, this average sits much lower than one year ago at this time, when the 30-year fixed averaged 4.76 percent. In addition, Freddie Mac said, 30-year fixed mortgages have now averaged below 4.00 percent for 15 straight weeks, which is doing wonders for homebuyer affordability.

Northaft thinks that the strengthening job market could help to stabilize these near-record-low mortgage rates.

Job growth over the last six months was the strongest since 2006, he said.

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Tags: Mortgage Rates, Rates

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From Taxis to Parking Meters, Credit Card Use Is on the Rise

March 14th, 2012

Taking a trip to the Big Apple? Then plan on getting around like a native New Yorker and leave your cash at home. Now that NYC cabs are equipped with swipe machines, people are charging their rides more and more often. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reports that more than half the total fare revenue was paid with the swipe of a credit card in January 2012.

Passengers used credit cards in 47% of all taxi trips, according to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. That’s a big jump from 2009, when only about one-third of trips were paid for with plastic.

The WSJ doesn’t offer a concrete explanation for the uptick in charged taxi rides, but notes that businesspeople might prefer the ability to itemize credit card expenditures instead of using cash. Not to mention that people are generally feeling more comfortable relying on credit cards these days.

Where Else Can You Go Cashless?

The push for credit card readers on everything from soda machines to smartphones is certainly strong—and popular. Credi

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Should the Government Ban Banks’ Payday Loans?

March 9th, 2012

When we think of predatory lending practices, the first thought that often comes to mind is the payday loan industry, catering to people barely, if at all, living paycheck to paycheck. Payday loans service communities with an aversion or without a need for or trust of the mainstream financial industry. Offering short-term loans designed to help people survive until the next paycheck arrives, payday lenders charge fees, $16 per $100 borrowed on average, that would be considered usurious if measured by annual percentage rate standards.

Eager not to let non-banking lenders take all the best opportunities for profiting off families struggling the most, mainstream banks are in the payday loan business as well. They dont call them payday loans, though. The name has a negative connotation. Instead, they use names like Wells Fargos Direct Deposit Advance, and tout their lower fees. The average fee for a mainstream payday loan is $10 per $100 borrowed, and the average duration of the loan is 10 days; the result is an annual percentage rate equivalent of 365%.

Despite the slightly lower fees, these products are likely more profitable for banks than payday loans are for independent lenders.

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Tags: Loans, Payday Loans

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The Tuesday Podcast: What Mormons Can Teach The IRS

March 7th, 2012

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that each Mormon in good standing should tithe 10 percent of his or her income.

“That’s written in stone, and preached from the pulpit,” says Gordon Dahl, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, who is Mormon.

But while the church is very precise about that figure — 10 percent of income — it does not tell its members what income means.

“Which is really interesting to us economists, because we want to know how people define income,” says Dahl.

As anyone who has ever done their taxes knows, figuring out what counts as income is harder than it sounds.

On the show today, we look into how Mormons figure out how much to tithe, and what that tells us about how people think about income and taxes.

Tags: Teach, Teach Irs

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Trading and Profit and Loss Account

March 7th, 2012

Trading Account

As already discussed, first section of trading and profit and loss account is called trading account. The aim of preparing trading account is to find out gross profit or gross loss while that of second section is to find out net profit or net loss.

Preparation of Trading Account

Trading account is prepared mainly to know the profitability of the goods bought (or manufactured) sold by the businessman. The difference between selling price and cost of goods sold is the,5 earning of the businessman. Thus in order to calculate the gross earning, it is necessary to know:

(a) cost of goods sold.

(b) sales.

Total sales can be ascertained from the sales ledger. The cost of goods sold is, however, calculated. n order to calculate the cost of sales it is necessary to know its meaning. The ‘cost of goods’ includes the purchase price of the goods plus expenses relating to purchase of goods and brining the goods to the place of business. In order to calculate the cost of goods ” we should deduct from the total cost of goods purchased the cost of goods in hand. We ca

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Tags: Account, Loss Account

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