Did You Know

FICO Reveals How Common Credit Mistakes Affect Scores
Disclosed for the 1st time, ‘damage points’ taken off for late payments
The greater transparency about FICO scores is important because American consumers’ ability to get credit rises and falls with the number. FICO, the company that pioneered credit scoring, assigns consumers a three-digit number from 300 to 850, [...]

The proportion of U.S. homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23%, threatening prospects for a sustained housing recovery.
Nearly 10.7 million households had negative equity in their homes in the third quarter, according to First American CoreLogic, a real-estate information company based in Santa [...]

Short-sale approval is often contingent on the buyer and seller making concessions. This means that the lender could ask the buyers to pay a higher price. The seller could be asked to bring money into escrow so that the lender nets more from the sale than the contract provides. If either party is unable or [...]

A recent report from the Pew Research Center found that older adults feel younger out west. Fully 78% of adults ages 65 and older who live in the West say they don’t feel old, compared with 67% of older adults who live in the rest of the country.
Not that we’re tooting our own horn [...]

First Internet message sent 40 years ago

Internet messages started with a crash 40 years ago today, and life hasn’t been the same since. “We transmitted the ‘L’ … and the ‘O’ — and then the other computer crashed,” says UCLA’s Leonard Kleinrock, who helped send that first message on the university’s campus on Oct. 29, [...]