So why bother worrying about a few hundred dollars here and there? It’s a lot of work to fight with an organization, especially a large one that’s not particularly reputable. And in the end, there is a good chance you’ll get nothing for your work. If you spend 40 hours trying to recoup $200, you’re …
When I was in high school I needed a method of backing up data. Standard 3.5″ floppy disks were too small. This was around the time that zip drives were becoming popular. I bought a Sony HiFD thinking I was being clever because it was backwards compatible with 3.5″ disks. It never worked correctly. Within …
My parents meticulously check every penny of every purchase on the receipt. The compare the receipts against the credit card statement. They check utility bills, etc. And they are frequently finding mistakes. I rarely check receipts and bills closely. I understand that I’m probably being slightly overcharged on a fairly regular basis, but I have …
See last post. First they made the claim that they had already offered to reduce my total points from 4.125 to 3.5, which wasn’t true. They then offered to reduce the points to 3.625. Even though this was not as good as what they were offering on their web site, I obviously wasn’t going to …
I’ve purchased warranties on relatively low cost items before. It wasn’t something I gave much thought to. I was asked “do you want to warranty on those tires?” I said yes. Then ten minutes later I thought to myself: Gee, that was a waste of money. Even if something had happened to the tire during …
I received the PMI agreement from Citi. The first thing I noticed is that my signature is nowhere to be seen, which I suspected. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this. The other thing I noticed is that the appraised value does not appear to be correct, although that’s not important. So basically, …
See earlier post. I finally told my loan agent I was going to visit his office to see if we could get some of these errors straightened out. He didn’t seem to be too enthusiastic about about me dropping by for a visit. In fact I couldn’t even get in the door. The main entrance …
I made PMI payments as discussed in my last post for about two and a half years. Even though interest rates were low at the time my loan was made, the higher percentage due to it being an investor property, combined with the PMI, made the effective rate over 7% (and climbing). I was looking …
I only put down 10% on my investment property. Generally, when you put down less than 20% on a property (LTV of 80%), you either need to purchase Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) or you need to take out a second loan. For investment properties, you might need an LTV of 75% or less. I don’t …
OK, so it’s really a credit union. Back in August of 2010, when mortgage rates were at all time lows, I decided to refinance both an investment property and what used to be my primary residence before I lost my job. NASA Federal Credit Union was ranked A+ by the BBB. My brother had used …