Your rates of bank

The Federal Reserve began to slash short-term interest rates almost a year ago. Yet we have higher mortgage rates now than we had then. What gives?- advertisement -

No single answer explains why some rates have fallen while fixed mortgage rates have climbed from an average of 6.43 percent a year ago to 6.6 percent this week. Among the several reasons, you can sum up the main one in two words: credit risk. Lenders behave cautiously now because they lent recklessly in previous years, leading to a surge of foreclosures.

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When one thinks of “Today” show weatherman and frequent NBC specials host Al Roker, several adjectives might come to mind — friendly, jovial, perhaps even cuddly. But “hard-hitting” is probably not one of them. Well, it should be.- advertisement -

Roker, who will surely further those adjectives when he begins hosting the new “Celebrity Family Feud” on NBC starting July 1, has also produced investigative specials and reality shows on topics from the country’s growing meth problem to the risky lives of DEA agents through his production company, Al Roker Entertainment (formerly Al Roker Productions). Bankrate spoke to Roker about his life and career — a career far more varied than most people realize.

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What it is and when you can enroll
Medicare Part D offers no single “one-size-fits-all” prescription drug plan of its own. Instead, the federal government has opted to subsidize private insurers so that they, in turn, could offer this optional prescription drug coverage to Medicare beneficiaries. These private insurance plans must meet or exceed the drug benefit standard established by the federal government in the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, and they potentially lower prescription drug costs for most Medicare beneficiaries.

The good news is that everyone on Medicare is eligible to receive Part D prescription drug coverage. The bad news is, in order to obtain and benefit from it, it’s up to beneficiaries to take the initiative and select a prescription drug plan on their own and then to review that coverage annually to make sure that it remains the best option for their specific needs. That’s because premiums, deductibles, co-pays and the drugs covered in the plans change from year to year.

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The housing rescue bill, soon to become law, is full of goodies and not-so-goodies for homeowners and those who aspire to be homeowners. Here are some highlights.

First-time homeowner tax credit
The law will extend a tax credit of up to $7,500 to first-time homebuyers. A first-time homebuyer is defined as someone who hasn’t owned a home in three years.

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The tax credit is for 10 percent of the purchase price, up to $7,500, but phases out for higher-income homeowners. Homeowners are eligible for the tax credit if they bought after April 8 of this year and before July 1, 2009.

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Not surprisingly, George Kiebala is in the pro camp. He owns Curvy Road, a Chicago-based company that sells fractional ownerships of exotic cars.

“The level of owning a Lamborghini is pretty high,” says Kiebala. “If you’ve got the money, and you want to have your car sitting in your condo’s garage in Belize, it still needs to be stored a certain way. It needs to be driven frequently or various things will go bad, and the car can become inoperable, and suddenly you have a giant quarter of a million dollar piece of metal in a garage that doesn’t run. And people would think you were nuts.”

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The drive for higher yields is pushing some money market funds and, now, some bond funds to look for better returns in dangerous places.- advertisement -

The result is that some ultra short-term bond funds have had spectacular losses, compared with other funds in their category, and investors who were looking for better gains with minimal risk are left holding the bag.

Charles Schwab customers are the latest to experience this. Both the Schwab YieldPlus - Investor Shares (SWYPX) and the Schwab YieldPlus - Select Shares (SWYSX) are down approximately 20 percent year-to-date. Compare that with the 1.4 percent year-to-date average loss for the 78 ultra short-term bond funds tracked by Lipper.

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Summer’s in full swing. Have you taken your vacation yet?- advertisement -

Yes, gas prices are high, the airlines are nickel-and-diming us to death and it’s costing more money to eat, whether at home or in a restaurant. We can come up with dozens of reasons why it would be a foolish waste of time and money to take time off from our jobs — which pay the bills, after all — and visit some remote place for a week or two.

Here’s the best reason to just do it: It’s good for your mental and physical health to decompress. In fact, it’s quite possible to recapture that childlike “joie de vivre” that can prove so elusive as one pressure-filled workweek follows the next, much like the blurred sights that flash past when you ride the subway.

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It’s no secret that the nation’s subprime mortgage meltdown, spike in foreclosures and fall in home prices have affected legions of homebuyers, home sellers and homeowners. But what may be surprising is that the turmoil in today’s U.S. housing markets has important implications for renters as well.- advertisement -

“There is some pickup in demand, but there is also a pickup in supply — both new apartments that are being built and also units shifting from owner to renter,” says Mark Obrinsky, chief economist of the National Multi Housing Council, or NMHC, an apartment industry trade group.

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Is your bank speeding money out of your checking account faster than you can put it in? Do you feel like someone just set your financial hamster wheel on fast-spin?- advertisement -

Welcome to the new reality of check “float” — or lack thereof. Float refers to the time it takes for money to leave your checking account.

If you’ve always paid your bills on time with money to spare, you may never have given float a second thought and probably haven’t noticed its disappearance.

But if you routinely pay bills a few days before payday hoping a paycheck will clear before creditors ask your bank for payment, you’ve probably discovered that playing the float game doesn’t work anymore.

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