This was the first year I ever donated anything financially substantial ($200+) to a charitable organization mostly because financial philanthropy wasn’t something instilled in me as a child at no fault of my parents (my father bought a one-way ticket from Taiwan to the U.S. and when asked “What happens if it doesn’t work out?” he responded “It has to.”). I had donated my time to local hospitals, various drives, and naturally some pints of blood but never straight up cash. But in reading an article in the news today, I saw that various health/medical charities received tons of money for research but not as much to fund things like screenings and tests – considered an overlooked “niche.” I was surprised only in that I didn’t even think about it like that.

When I sent a donation to the American Cancer Society (and the Red Cross for Katrina), I wanted it to go towards research… to find a cure for cancer. But as the article pointed out, it’s hard to see the “results” of your donation. The ACS does a great job of explaining what your money funds –

- A donation of $250 funds 83 hours of service at our toll-free National Cancer Information Center
- $1,000 can ease the financial burden of a patient needing lodging near a cancer treatment center
- $2,500 can provide 25 breast cancer patients with support from trained survivors through our Reach to Recovery program

But if you were to take that same money and donate it to an organization offering free screenings/examinations or free lodging or something like that, you know that your money will be used to possibly help identify cancer at an early stage and quite possibly save someone’s life.

A great resource for finding out more about charities is CharityNavigator.org. I highly recommend this resource even though, sadly, I found out that the American Cancer Society is a relatively inefficient organization (however, the American Red Cross is great). But… two organizations I am familiar with have four star ratings: Make-A-Wish Foundation International and Locks of Love (I never heard of them until my girlfriend donated some of her hair to them).

Does it matter if you have a $300k mortgage at 5.5% or a $270k mortgage at 6.5%? In the the last few years we’ve seen housing prices skyrocket while mortgage interest rates have remained extremely low. Now that rates are increasing, we’re probably going to see housing prices slipping a little as to keep the relative monthly cost at about the same levels (plus a bit of appreciation) and thus the total payout at the same levels (if you keep the home until you fully pay off the mortgage). Recall that the payment has a principal and an interest component so with interest rates rising, a greater portion of the total payout will shift from the interest column to the principal column. One would anticipate housing prices slip a little, or not rise as quickly, as interest rates rise because buyers don’t have any more money when the rates rise and thus the total monthly price must remain the same.

Assuming a 30 year fixed interest rate mortgage loan:

Now one would argue that part of that interest will be returned to you each year because of the mortgage interest deduction so to make that comparison (and to make it simplistically) we’ll simply take the difference in interest payments, divide by 4 (assuming a 25% marginal tax rate), and find that the difference is about $7800 over 30 years between the 6.5% and the 5.5% interest rate rows. Granted, the rebate should be heavily skewed towards the front of the loan but it’s a mere $7800 on a six figure loan (2.8%). When you compare the difference between the 10% and 5.5% loan, it’s a more significant $26,689.94 (13.7%).

However, one thing this does illustrate is that the price of the house should fall as interest rates rise because the monthly payment should remain the same for one house. As rates approach 6.5%, one would anticipate that a $300,000 house would sell for only $270,000 and that you shouldn’t worry when it does. This doesn’t bode well for people who are flipping homes and could be why existing home sales have slowed down?

Caveats: This simple math ignores or simplifies a lot of things like how the mortgage is amortized, the type of mortgage (30-year fixed), transaction costs, inflation, etc. I think it’s conceptually right though and if I’m wrong, I’d really like to hear about it.

Added a fun little plugin that Flexo and Nickel (sidebar) put in a few/many months ago listing the top ten/fifteen commenter’s on their blogs. I had a pretty good idea of who commented the most but didn’t realize that Nickel was that prolific.

Here’s the current ranking:

• nickel (62)
• Jonathan@MyMoneyBlog (31)
• Matt (28)
• tim (26)
• Caitlin (22)
• FMF (20)
• Jose (18)
• Cap (17)
• Flexo (14)
• Dawn (11)
• mbhunter (10)
• Matt (9)
• pfadvice (9)
• thc (8)
• Mel (8)

It counts based on the email address you provided in the comments box and it should link back to your site if you provided one. As you can see, getting on the list is probably pretty easy.

At the advice of Jeff (www.pfadvice.com), I kermudgeoned a Top 5 for the last 30 Days list in the sidebar as well. Thanks for the idea!

Thanks for contributing!

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is expected to announce today that the FCC is revising its report last year and will be in support of an “a la carte” pricing scheme in the cable industry, where consumers will be able to pick and choose which channels they want instead of being forced into buying bundles. They originally claimed bills would go up (by 14-30%) but it looks like they’ll be revising it. Expect “viewership” in popular channels like Oxygen and the Lifetime Network to plummet. (I’m only kidding!)

If this leads to lower cable prices I’ll be happy. I only ever watch ESPN, The History Channel, some cooking shows sometimes, and the local channels.

Source: CNN/Money (Article remove from site)

The Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 reinstated a tax break for educators that allow them to deduct up to $250 of qualified out-of-pocket expenses when calculating their AGI, it’s called the Educator Expense Deduction. I don’t disagree with allowing this but it’s an example of how our system is failing if our system anticipates that a teacher in “public or private elementary or secondary schools” will be spending money out of pocket for their classrooms. In fact, I think it should be raised to have no cap or at least a very high cap. When you also consider that teacher salaries are already low, justified by some as reasonable because they only work for part of the year; it’s no wonder that the educational system has failed some students.

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How strongly to you hold your beliefs? Would you betray them for $5,000? What about $10,000? What about $1M? Watch the clip in this post. As you watch it, think about how much it would take for you to bend your beliefs just a little bit. And then, if you’re so inclined, read the rest of this for my thoughts.

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Update: They’ve been found. Article.

Marylanders: Last night a woman, Sarah Abigale Hernandez-Torres, and her five year old son, Isaac Hernandez, were abducted in Wheaton, MD at a metro station and there is an Amber Alert out for them. Police are looking for a red 2003 Dodge Ram pickup with a red cap or a 1996 Toyota T-100 pickup (color unknown) owned by Carlos Rigoberto Delcid.

Red 2003 Dodge Ram pickup	1996 Toyota T-100 pickup

The red Dodge Ram pickup has the words “Red Scorpion” across the front windshield. It has Maryland Bay tags: 4-9-9-1-4-B-Y (49914BY). The Toyota pickup has Maryland tags 1-E-G-8-0-7 (1EG807).

Details: Amber Alert from Maryland State Police website

Some news articles, most are Associated Press articles:

Anyone with information is asked to immediately call 911 or the Montgomery County Police at 240-876-1226.

Thank you.

I’ve had a nice large stack of active but unused credit cards in my desk for the better part of three or four years. I’ve kept them only because it is generally accepted that percentage utilization and average credit card age play a significant role in your overall credit score. By keeping the lines of credit open, it kept my average age longer and my utilization up. Since I just bought a house and don’t foresee a major purchase requiring credit, there is no reason for me to have these active but unused cards anymore. God forbid someone breaks into my home and steals the cards, I’d be in a world of hurt so I went about canceling a handful today.

One huge lesson for all you preparing for either a massive Purge-o-Rama (My made up term for the opposite of App-O-Rama, a Fatwallet term for when someone applies for a ton of cards to get bonuses, points, etc.) is to check the points and see if you can get something free before you cancel the credit card account. One of my older cards is a Sony Platinum Card, which had over 6000 points on it, mostly from bonuses such as 5,000 for opening it, 250 for all electronic statements, and 250 for registering with the online Sony Card Rewards Catalog. So before I canceled it, I went online and got myself four DVD’s for free: Glory (Special Edition), Spider-Man (Widescreen Special Edition), The Natural, and Ali – about $60 worth of DVD’s according to Amazon.com prices.

Incidentally, if you want a free DVD, sign up for the { 1 comment }