Word: lows
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most homeowners have got the message: you no longer have to wait for mortgage rates to drop 2 percentage points before refinancing. With tumbling interest rates and a proliferation of low-fee mortgage options, a mere half-point drop may provide enough savings to warrant the paperwork. Don't run to the phones just yet, though. The Internet is where you'll first want to run, to survey current rates and fees, and calculate monthly payments and savings...
...depends on the mortgage rate you're paying and the length of time you think you'll stay in your home. If you'll be moving soon, forget it. And if you'll need a "jumbo" mortgage (a loan amount higher than $227,150), rates may not have moved low enough. Today, a 30-year fixed jumbo rate is about 7.25%, vs. only 6.75% for smaller mortgages. (I'm not convinced, by the way, that risks to lenders warrant that kind of premium. And with home values rising, the all-powerful, government-supported mortgage buyers, Fannie Mae and Freddie...
...believe rates will keep falling. I'd like to be in a position to refinance again next year without losing any closing costs. The macro bet is to get a one-year, adjustable-rate mortgage. But ARM rates aren't low enough, and I'm opposed to making a macro bet with my home. I could, gulp, be wrong about rates. If I'm right, though, the smart loan is one without closing costs. The time to buy down your rate by paying points and fees is when market rates are poised to trend up, and that...
Howard Gardner, along with other education gurus, deserves a large amount of the blame for the low achievement of public school students. Teachers take a shred of truth--in Gardner's case, that students have different aptitudes and learning styles--and manipulate it into the absurd, so that students build boats instead of reading and writing about European settlers. These education theorists have replaced knowledge with process, phonics with whole language, merit with relevance and rigor with self-esteem. As a teacher who plans to retire soon, I shudder to think what the future holds for our youth if these...
...question is: Just how persuasive was Gates? To hear the Microsoft boss tell it, he was doing his old pal Andy a favor: "Intel was wasting its money by writing low-quality software that created incompatibilities," Gates says with a shrug on the video. Grove?s account sounds a little more ominous: "We basically caved," he told Fortune magazine later that year. "Life?s too short" to introduce software that Microsoft doesn?t support, he added. Throw in a 1995 memo written by Intel VP Steven McGeady, the government?s latest witness, in which "Gates made vague threats of support...