Recently, I came across an article about the top grossing movies of all time, and my mind immediately ran to the likes of Titanic and Star Wars .   However, the author of the article factored inflation into the equation to determine which movie truly had the greatest draw with the public – his argument was that a movie coming out today will make far more money with ticket prices being higher than one that came out 50 years ago.   With those adjustments, Gone With the Wind came out on top.   It’s not a bad flick, but I was a little surprised.   However, you can’t argue with the numbers based on popular vote via purchases. Here’s the odd thing, though: according to the American Film Institute (AFI) – the self-appointed vanguard of all things cinematic – the greatest film of all time is Citizen Kane , a movie about a man who was fueled to succeed at all costs by his resentment for his parents for naming his childhood snow sled “Rosebud” instead of somethi...

Okay, it's not really a test - it's more like a quiz, but it doesn't have the same verbal POW  when you say, "This is only a quiz." Do you feel me?  Yes, the photo above does depict an actual TEST of an explosive device, but I promise you that this quiz and its answers will blow your mind.  Too corny?  Sorry about that.  Moving on. I'll keep it short - just three questions.  Ready?  Here we go: 1. With a 580 FICO on an FHA loan, what is the minimum down payment requirement?      a. 3.5%      b. 15%      c. 20%      d. FHA loans require a 620 minimum FICO score 2. With a FICO over 700 on a Conventional loan, what's the lowest minimum down payment?      a. 1%      b. 5%      c. 10%      d. 20% 3. According to the NAR's latest data, the typical down payment for 60% of first-time home buyers is _____ or ...

Recently, I saw an infographic either on Facebook or Instagram (which means it HAS TO BE TRUE) that read something like this: “80% of all plane crashes occur in either the first 3 minutes or the last 8 minutes of a flight.”   Hmmmm .   I guess that’s one way to look at the data – and I guess it’s encouraging to those nervous flyers who like to play the odds – that if you have a 120-minute flight, you have a high percentage of living blissfully for the 109 minutes between takeoff and landing.   However, the infographic would be more accurate if it read something like this: “100% of ALL plane crashes occur in the last 10 seconds of a flight.”   Before you curl up in the fetal position and hide under your desk in light of this grim statistic, take a few deep breaths, and let me explain: no matter how you couch the truth, it’s still the truth.   There’s a new website out in Internetland (I’m sure that’s what Al Gore wanted to name it when he invented ...

Right up front, I’m going to admit that this week’s edition is going to be HEAVILY borrowed – nay, copied word for word – from an article recently written by Ken Harney, a gentleman who covers housing issues on Capitol Hill for The Washington Post Writers Group.   He does a great job of citing rules and sources – it would be sort of dumb for me to try and rewrite it and try to pass it off for my own product.   Read on: You’ve almost certainly seen or heard pitches for “credit-repair” services promising to clean up your credit problems, reduce your debt or even raise your credit score by 100 points . But experts warn that these services can do far more harm than good to mortgage seekers — even get them rejected on the spot . In fact, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has won two new legal settlements worth more than $2 million in penalties against credit-repair companies . The CFPB alleged that Prime Credit, IMC Capital, Commercial Credit Co...

There’s an old saying, “A face only a mother could love.”   (I can assure you it was invented centuries before I was born.)   That saying, though, does remind me of the actor Steve Buscemi .   Most everyone knows he’s made a career for himself being the “weird looking guy” in movies, and I’m going to take a wild guess and say his paychecks have been healthy enough to buy a couple of houses.   With that said, though, I’m sure in very short order, he realized that he wouldn’t be winning the parts of Ethan Hunt in “Mission: Impossible” or Logan in “X Men” – he sought out what he thought was available and reachable. Ideally, most of us want the brand new house that no one has lived in before us or the beautifully maintained house that has a fully remodeled kitchen and newly expanded master bathroom.   Conversely, we’re not walking around and saying to ourselves and anyone wh o will listen, “I want the house that had a small fire on the back half of it twel...