Your rates of bank

Are you thinking about buying a new car, but dreading the dealer haggles that come with the purchase? There are a number of car-buying services that say they’ll do the negotiating dirty work for you, and save you thousands of dollars in the process.- advertisement -

These services are often just a mouse click or phone call away. Fees range from free (if you’re a member of one of their affiliates) to anywhere from $200 to $400, with about half of the amount due upfront.

Buyers typically begin by calling the car-buying service or filling out information online.

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If you’ve ever aimlessly wandered around in a crowded parking lot, you probably have a notion of what it feels like to have your vehicle stolen. There’s that sense of dread, unease and confusion as you think, “It has to be here somewhere. My car couldn’t have just driven away.”- advertisement -

Well, yes — it could.

Every 26.4 seconds, another car is stolen in the United States, according to a report by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The good news is that the number of car thefts has been decreasing over the last three years. The bad news is that the recovery rate of stolen autos is also down.

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Washington Mutual, Wachovia and National City are among the financial institutions that have announced huge losses and are looking for billions of dollars from private equity firms or others in the industry just to keep their doors open. In all likelihood, the bigger banks and savings and loan associations will survive the mortgage debacle and ensuing credit crunch, albeit somewhat battered and bruised.- advertisement -

But smaller banks may not fare as well, although it doesn’t appear that we’ll see a cascade of bank failures. Nevertheless, the increased risk has prompted the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., or FDIC, to beef up its staffing in anticipation of banks going belly-up.

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Some ways to get help in providing medical care for your pets.

Help for your pets

1.Pet clinical trials2.Student programs3.Veterinarian payment plans4.Helping Pets Fund5.Humane Society grant program6.Pet care insurance7.Practice preventative health care8.Food issues9.Foster homes/breed rescue10.Pet credit card

Pet clinical trials
“There are many clinical studies that are ongoing at The University of Tennessee as there are at other universities,” says Joe Bartges, DVM, Ph.D., a professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. “Many clinical studies provide care and treatment and follow-up at no expense to pet owners, while others subsidize the cost of providing the medical care.”

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In this age of flash-in-the-pan pop stars, the steady longevity of Steve Winwood can be hard to fathom. Now 60, Winwood began performing as a teenager, scoring his first hits at the age of 17, when his band The Spencer Davis Group rocked the charts with “Gimme Some Loving” and “I’m a Man.”- advertisement -

Over the next decade he formed the supergroup Blind Faith with Cream refugee Eric Clapton, then followed it with the popular ’70s act Traffic, releasing classics including “The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys” and “Dear Mr. Fantasy.”

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Millions of people know actor John O’Hurley as the man with the stentorian voice who entertained us as Elaine Benes’ boss on “Seinfeld.” His witty and wry portrayal of J. Peterman led to many successful print and TV ads for major companies.- advertisement -

Or maybe you remember him for mesmerizing us with his fancy footwork as the runner-up celebrity dancer in the first season of “Dancing With The Stars,” where he ended up in a dance-off with soap star Kelly Monaco. In winning the September 2005 rematch against Monaco, he earned $126,000 for the charity Golfers Against Cancer.

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Divorce is rarely an easy process. But falling home values and sluggish real estate sales are combining to make it particularly difficult right now.- advertisement -

Couples aren’t fighting over who gets to keep the house. They’re scrambling to get away from the burden of it. It’s too soon to see the trend reflected in official statistics; the most recent marriage and divorce numbers compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics date back to 2005 — just when real estate markets started to turn down from their boom years. But lawyers and financial planners anecdotally say they are seeing more clients stay married — if only for the time being — simply because they cannot afford to break up.

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The federal government has put its foot down: A lender can’t give you a subprime mortgage unless you are able to repay it. And that goes for jumbo mortgages, too — maybe.- advertisement -

You’re probably wondering why the feds find it necessary to tell lenders that they shouldn’t hand over the money before figuring out whether borrowers can afford the monthly mortgage payments. That seems awfully basic. But for a while, verifying a borrower’s ability to pay was out of fashion.

Like bell-bottom jeans, the practice of verifying a mortgage borrower’s ability to repay was wildly popular when Led Zeppelin ruled the airwaves, then became hopelessly uncool, and now is popular again.

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They should call Chase at the phone number that is on their mortgage statement.- advertisement -

When should borrowers call you — before they’re late with their first payment, or sometime later on (e.g., 60 to 90 days after missing the first payment)?
Borrowers concerned they may miss a payment should call their lender. It is never too early to start the discussion.

Should a borrower ask to speak with someone specific?
If a borrower calls Chase to discuss possible payment difficulties, the initial discussions will be handled through the customer care department.

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Prior to becoming the captivating star she is on the hit TV show “CSI,” Marg Helgenberger had a very interesting career path while living in Nebraska. Besides being the local weather girl, she also worked in the meat packing plant where her father was a meat inspector.- advertisement -

But Helgenberger had bigger plans in her sights. Just two weeks after graduating from Northwestern University with a drama degree, she moved to New York City and landed a role on the daytime soap, “Ryan’s Hope.” But it was her turn as the drug-addicted prostitute K.C. on the TV series “China Beach” in the late 1980s that really established Helgenberger’s career and personal life.

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What is the Treasury asking for?- advertisement -

The Treasury is asking for $700 billion to buy, own and sell mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. Under the Treasury’s proposal, the Cabinet department would be able to buy these assets, sell them and use that money to buy more. The Treasury would have a two-year window to buy securities, beginning with the enactment of the law that would grant the Treasury these powers.

Will I still be able to get a mortgage?

It depends upon what type of loan you want. (more…)

The upside of working for yourself? It’s hard to get fired. That’s one reason why many people who have full-time jobs also have a little business on the side.- advertisement -

But surprisingly, if you’ve recently lost your 9-to-5 job, you might want to consider taking a temporary hiatus from your side business as well in order to maximize your unemployment benefits.

While some states encourage out-of-work individuals to start or grow their own small businesses, other localities will deduct a portion of any money earned from the weekly benefits.

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House prices nationwide dropped 7.6 percent in one year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Half of the houses sold in the second quarter of this year cost $206,500 or more. That’s 7.6 percent less than the comparable median price of $223,500 in the second quarter of 2007.

The national number doesn’t tell the local story, and all housing is local. The locality with the most eye-popping decline in housing prices was Sacramento, where the market is either horribly ugly or spectacularly beautiful, depending on whether you are a seller or a first-time buyer.

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Savvy investors keep a portion of their portfolio in fixed-income investments where it’s not subject to the ups and downs of the stock market. Many people opt for the rock-solid security of certificates of deposit, or CDs, but you don’t necessarily want to go to the bank and simply buy a handful of CDs. Having a strategy can lead to bigger returns.

Strategy laddering
Interest rates rise and fall, but in a fairly slow manner. If the economy is in a slump and interest rates are in a prolonged low-rate cycle, you don’t want to get stuck buying a bunch of long-term CDs with low interest rates.

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It was 1978 and “National Lampoon’s Animal House” was a box-office hit, that has since become a cult classic. It was also the movie that introduced the world to Karen Allen.- advertisement -

Her next big break came in 1981, when director Steven Spielberg cast her as the feisty heroine opposite Harrison Ford in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Allen also took on smaller films while always returning to her first love — the Broadway stage.

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Kevin Nealon spent nine years on “Saturday Night Live,” and in that time established himself with a deadpan calm that lead to many stealthy laughs, with characters like Mr. Subliminal, and one-half of the weight-lifting Schwarzenegger-parody duo Hans and Franz.- advertisement -

After leaving the show, Nealon continued securing movie and TV roles, but never really found a way to establish himself the way “SNL” had until the Showtime series “Weeds,” where he plays pothead accountant Doug Wilson, the perfect outlet for Nealon’s mellow irreverence.

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For many people approaching retirement, life can seem like it’s going along according to plan. Now that their kids are grown and out of the house with families of their own, they’ve settled into the role of doting grandparents.- advertisement -

But whether because of a death in the family, divorce, or problems with mental illness or drug addiction, more than 6 million grandparents across the country are raising their grandchildren, according to the Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey.

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Identity thieves are capitalizing on the excitement of this presidential election by running phishing scams with a voter-registration twist. They want to con people into divulging profitable data, such as Social Security numbers, bank account data or credit card information.

A phishing scam involves an e-mail that mimics a legitimate entity and includes a link that when clicked on, downloads malicious software onto the recipient’s computer or takes them to a fraudulent Web site designed to capture personal or financial information.

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Gamber says traditional boardinghouses provided daily meals mostly to single male boarders as Americans moved from the farm to the cities during the 1800s.

The boardinghouse’s seedy reputation, though sometimes deserved, was as much a reflection of the various turn-of-the-century campaigns for decency as the living conditions themselves, she says.

Cybill Shepherd scored early big-screen hits with “The Last Picture Show,” and “The Heartbreak Kid,” and then spent a decade trying to regain the respect of Hollywood’s fickle industry.- advertisement -

It seems almost everyone is familiar with her story — a quick rise from top model to actress-of-the-month, and eventually, a Golden-Globe winning television actress with sitcom hits “Moonlighting,” “Cybill” and lately, a regular role on “The L Word.”

Over her 40 years in show business, singer and actress Cybill Shepherd has always struggled to disprove those who said she was just a pretty face.

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“The first big trend, I think, is all the stainless steel,” says Mark Connelly, senior director of testing for appliances at Consumer Reports. The good news for consumers is that manufacturers have “been doing that without the price getting too crazy.”

The abundance of stainless steel is a reflection of what’s going on in the high-end kitchen market, he says. “The more stainless steel, the more expensive,” he says, but, it’s popularity has made the sleek, shiny look more affordable for everyone over the past year.

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New York, Texas, Florida. For the second straight year, those are the most expensive states in which to get a mortgage.

Nationwide, the average origination and title fees on a $200,000 mortgage this year totaled $3,118, according to Bankrate’s annual survey of closing costs. The fees in the survey don’t include taxes, insurance or prepaid items such as prorated interest or homeowner association dues.

Fees in New York City were highest, averaging $4,016 in Bankrate’s survey. Houston came in second, with fees that averaged $3,975. After that came Buffalo, N.Y., with fees averaging $3,845, and then Miami, at $3,683.

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In recent weeks, mortgages quietly became harder to get.- advertisement -

Mortgage insurers require higher credit scores and bigger down payments than they did a month or two ago. Underwriting software used by brokers and loan officers is issuing fewer approvals than at the end of May.

Most buyers can still get home loans, but some find themselves pushed out of the private mortgage insurance, or PMI, market. Instead, they have to get mortgage insurance through the Federal Housing Administration. That often entails having to switch mortgage brokers, because many don’t have FHA certification.

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For as long as credit cards have been in use, it has been standard operating procedure for issuers to urge cardholders to sign the back of new cards as soon as the plastic arrives in the mail.

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But in an era when credit card companies promote “zero fraud liability,” online transactions are commonplace and point-of-purchase card readers and self-checkouts at retail stores essentially remove clerks from even handling the card, let alone looking at the signature, does it really matter if you do?

Want to do something truly patriotic to help preserve the American way of life?- advertisement -

Don’t retire. At least not yet.

That’s the advice of Andrew Yarrow, vice president and director of the Washington, D.C., office of the nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization Public Agenda.

Yarrow urges the nation’s 78 million baby boomers to forgo traditional or early retirement and work for a few more years, for their own sake and the good of the country.

If boomers all turn in their keys at age 55, 62 or 65 and head for the Tuscan hills, that great sucking sound you’ll hear is untold amounts of taxpayer dollars being leached from the economy. That is money heirs will either have to replace or do without.

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