Warning: Mortgage Auditing Program

Posted by random olio

So this week we received a letter in the mail stating that we “may be owed a refund of several thousand dollars from your mortgage lender.” It then gives the date we signed our home loan and the amount of our original loan. The letter goes on to say:

“Government studies by the FDIC as well as financial audits of lenders have shown that thousands of mortgages contained mistakes or overcharges. Your monthly mortgage payment may have been miscalculated and you may be due a refund from either your current or previous mortgage lender. The average refund is $1,497.32 and one third of the refunds equal $3,000 to $7,500. You are eligible for a mortgage analysis and refund review.”

At first I thought wow, I would not mind a refund! Then I think…this is not from my mortgage company, and all it says for the return address is: Mortgage Auditing Program//Division of Consumer Services – of WHAT company? So I Google: “Mortgage Auditing Program” and all I find are tons of hits about how this is a scam. That you have to pay $249 to sign up, etc. Yuck, I hate stuff like this, because it always makes me think of my grandma and how if she had received something like this, she might have believed it. She was very trusting of companies she worked with, and this is just vague enough and enticing enough to mess with your mind. Who does not want to learn that they could receive a refund from their mortgage company?

If you stop to think about it, the only time you usually see any type of refund from a large company for a mistake is through a class action lawsuit. So if your mortgage was miscalculated, then most likely others were too, or it was part of a larger situation where large numbers were effected and charged a fee they were not truly required to pay. If that happened, you would hear about it in the news or directly from your mortgage company.

Further research shows that the Better Business Bureau gave this company an F rating and they had 41 complaints in the last 12 months. With the following comment: “For $249 the company performs a review of the payments you have made to your mortgage lender.”

I just wanted to share this in case anyone else receives a similar letter. It is frustrating because I do not want individuals to get duped and excited about the possibility for a refund from $3,000 to $7,500!

Why are Chocolate Chip Cookies the default cookie?

Posted by random olio

Ah, what a wonderful weekend I had. It was between 75-80 degrees over the weekend, and we did all we could to be outside most of the weekend. I got a little pink, or maybe a little burnt. I do not mind. As pale as I am, I am used to the first sun of the season to leave me a little crisp around the edges. We had brunch outside, ran errands, decided to stay in Portland and do an early happy hour, I sat in the sun and read, and we extensively cleaned up our back yard. A full, sun filled weekend. It is supposed to be nice again today, but then we go back to rain for the rest of the week. I am just grateful for any amount of sunshine we can get right now!

I was also going to make Chris some of his favorite chocolate chip cookies yesterday, but then I was just wiped out after hours in the sun and hours cleaning up the backyard. Instead while parking my butt on the couch, and letting my mind wander a bit, I came to this random question: Why are chocolate chip cookies the default cookie or usually the cookie of choice? At meetings you usually get a choice of ham, turkey or veggie sandwiches or wraps. When you get a cookie it is usually chocolate chip. Why is that?

When I Googled: “Why are chocolate chip cookies the default cookie” all I got was a list of recipes for chocolate chip cookies. So I decided to look at the history of the chocolate chip cookie. This is what I found on Wikipedia:

“The chocolate chip cookie was accidentally developed by Ruth Graves Wakefield in 1930. She owned the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts, a very popular restaurant that featured home cooking in the 1930s. Her cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes, was published in 1936 by M. Barrows & Company, New York. It included the recipe “Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie”, which rapidly became a favorite to be baked in American homes.

Wakefield is said to have been making chocolate cookies and on running out of regular baker’s chocolate, substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate from Nestlé thinking that they would melt and mix into the batter. They did not and the chocolate chip cookie was born. Wakefield sold the recipe to Nestlé in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate chips. Every bag of Nestlé chocolate chips sold in North America has a variation (butter vs. margarine is now a stated option) of her original recipe printed on the back.”

Ah, Nestle Toll House. Just thinking of the yellow bag reminds me of my grandma. She always made the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips, and at the time (I am not sure if it is still the case today) the recipe called for Crisco. I never thought anything of it. Now I am grossed out thinking of all the many batches and batches of cookies I ate that were made with Crisco. I use butter today. My mom used margarine, mostly because I think it was the least expensive. She also made a variation of the chocolate chip cookie in bar form, what she called: “Congo Squares.” It is interesting to think my grandma = Crisco, my mom = margarine, me = butter. I guess you do not always do things they way you were raised.

Massachusetts has even named the chocolate chip cookie the state cookie. I love them, and I eat them, but how did they become the cookie of choice? What is your default cookie?

Should kids have to work for an allowance?

Posted by random olio

I am still on a kick about the book: “All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending” by Laura Vanderkam. This is the topic that I have been mulling over: Kids and Allowance. On page 210, Laura says:

“For instance, should kids get an allowance? It seems like a straightforward way to teach them how to manage money. Give them $5-$10 a week, and let them handle their small purchases out of that. Likewise, financial education for high schoolers sounds smart. Given the proportion of adults who live paycheck to paycheck and don’t understand what the interest rates on their credit card mean in terms of payments, it can’t hurt to teach kids about money.”

I take it one step further and ask: Should kids have to work for an allowance? I think growing up, my sister, brother, and I occasionally received an allowance. We definitely had to work for it. I can remember often my father would check our work and if it was not done well, we would not get paid. Honestly I do not think they had the money to truly pay us an allowance, so finding our work not perfect was maybe a way out of paying us. Other times he would find things around the house to give us in payment for the chores we had done. Once I remember receiving a caramel/chocolate candy bar that we were selling for school. So I guess in my house growing up it was more of the barter system. Even with the odd and inconsistent payment system I experienced, I do believe there is a purpose and educational aspect of receiving an allowance for chores or tasks. It starts kids out at a young age to know what it means to work and get paid for it. It teaches the value of money. It could be that if a child was willing to do more, they could get paid more (like overtime for adults, if the parents have the funds to do so). Parents could also institute a bonus system for excellent quality of work or attitude just as some adults may receive a bonus based on performance depending on their company.

If parents give an allowance without having to work for it, what life skills are the kids learning? When they become adults do they receive money without having to work for it? Maybe if they have a trust fund, but for the rest of us, we have to work hard for the money we are paid. I believe that hard work makes us think differently about our money, what we purchase, and how we spend or save. Does working for an allowance teach kids the beginning value of money in their lives? One could make the point that kids can learn the value of money and saving without having to work for it. I agree that it can be taught, however, those kids that have the opportunity to learn about the basics of money and how to manage it, in addition to having to work for it is an even better educational life experience.

I wonder what would financial education look like for high schoolers? I had an economics course in high school where we learned about stocks and bonds. I remember the simulation of our “made up companies” and how well our stocks did, but I never learned about the basics: balancing a checkbook, my credit report, credit score, credit card debt, etc. It was almost as though we went straight to Economics 3.0 but skipped 1.0 and 2.0. If we allow teenagers to drive cars at 16 (in many states), and allow them to be in control of expensive, heavy machinery, then why do we not ever teach them about their financial future? Did you learn what you know now from your parents, or from trial and error as an adult?

What do you think? Should kids have to work for their allowance?

Do you have self-control and willpower?

Posted by random olio

A week or so ago, I finished reading: The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal. It is a good book that makes you think about when you use self-control and willpower and when you choose otherwise. I have been fascinated with the concept of willpower lately, and why some of us have a ton of self-control and others do not. Kelly explains why this happens in her book.

One of the stories she shares about willpower talks about Valerie and her mother. Valerie’s mom has been diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer’s and could no longer live by herself. Valerie and her family made the decision to have her mother moved to a long-term care facility. Valerie felt responsible for visiting her mother everyday and since her other siblings did not live nearby, Valerie was left in charge. The situation made her very angry. To deal with her frustrations, on the way home from the care facility each night, she would stop by the nearby grocery and eat cupcakes and other sweets to feel better about herself. Valerie learns about a breathing technique in one of Kelly McGonigal’s Harvard classes, that teaches an individual to release their feelings while doing this breathing technique. Here is what shifted for Valerie after trying this specific technique:

“In time, the grocery store ritual lost its appeal and was replaced with a moment-by-moment willingness to feel whatever came up throughout the day. Valerie was even able to bring that same willingness to her visits with her mother, letting herself feel her frustration instead of telling herself she wasn’t angry at her mother. It didn’t change the situation, but it took away some of the stress.” p. 221

What I love about this experience is that while Valerie used the breathing techniques to release feelings and frustrations about the situation she is in with her mother, we can all shift our thoughts (whether through breathing exercises or shifting how we think about situations) so that we make sure to feel and process our feelings as we go through our days. For the example with Valerie, she cannot really change her situation, but she can change how she approaches her situation, and the choices she makes when she leaves the care facility each day. Guess what?! Valerie also stopped going to the grocery store and eating sweets. Releasing her feelings allowed her to be with her situation and she did not have to eat sweets to cope.

Are there things in your day that you could approach differently and feel as you go through your day, so you are completely present with how things truly are?

Dance Naked!!

Posted by random olio

Happy Monday to everyone! How was your weekend? There is sun here in Portland which is making me a bit giddy, maybe because my iPhone says rain for the rest of the week. I had a full weekend. We spent much of Saturday running errands around town and Sunday cleaning. Yes, cleaning again. Due to the rain and slightly warmer temperatures, our house became the home of ants in many of our rooms. We are used to it, we have lived here a few years, and they always come out in armies this time of year. It always gets old chasing them down. Ants are ants, I do not mind them, what I do mind is when they are crawling on my counters, or get anywhere near my bed. So after chasing them around the house, we usually always clean a ton, in hopes that they will not come back, and maybe just to clear our head of all the ants we have seen.

In honor of giddiness, sun, and that it is now April, I wanted to encourage you to: DANCE NAKED this week!

framed print on our wall

I love this print. I purchased it at the Lake Oswego Art Festival a few years back and framed it. For a long time it was over my desk and I would look at it while I worked. Now it is in our hallway. It reminds me to not work so hard, to get up and dance to music, to play, be free and have fun! On occasion, I get right to the point and dance naked!

Go enjoy your day, be playful, and if you feel so inspired – then DANCE NAKED!