Hugh's Worthless Blog

Yes, the only thing plunging faster this summer than the necklines of Hollywood's finest are the interest rates on new mortgages. Unfortunately, it appears that there are not too many people who qualify left to take advantage of these super low rates. It seems like the only people left who want those loans are those who are not qualified to receive them. New winners this year are people looking for jumbo mortgages who are finally seeing their rates drop close to the 5.5% level. People like ourselves who could qualify for those great rates already did so in the past few years. We refinanced last year after we sold our house and grabbed a good rate during the dip late last spring (April 2009). Sure, we could cut an extra 0.25% to 0.50% off our already low 4.910% rate, but that is hardly worth the closing costs on the loan for us. So no matter how low the rates go, I doubt we will take advantage of them. Yet other folks who could use those lower rates simply do not have the credit t

Even though I do not own an Apple iPod , each of my two children own an iPod Touch since they have very generous relatives. However, my son is not too gentle with his charging cable so he needed a new one.  I know we could have made the very quick trip over to the Apple Store in the St. Louis Galleria and purchased one for $19 plus tax, but I knew there were cheaper options. First I checked my favorite local retailer in the world, and sure enough the Brentwood  Micro Center had something available for one fourth the price of the Apple product. It is a retractable Kensington USB cable with an iPod tip included for only $4.99. However, with my experience with retractable mice, phone cords and other such items, I know they tend to break, and the tip may be the most valuable piece included. So I thought I would look around to see what else existed. At Cyberguys you can get a product called the Bone Link II for $11.95 which looks like exactly what I would want, a solid hunk of plasti

Yesterday to celebrate the Fourth, we decided to skip the fireworks and go to Sonic instead. Since they have their after 8:00pm 99 cent sundae special, we decided to go there and indulge in some inexpensive ice cream. It was starting to drizzle but the Sonic had an awning and it was not too hot to just park there and eat ice cream. We picked the closest one to us, the one on Manchester in Brentwood which we had not been to in two whole weeks (since Father's Day, when I decided it would be fun.) Once again I ordered a hot fudge sundae, but it appeared to be just a chocolate one. But I did not complain since it was only 99 cents! It appears the Sonic Blasts are also only 99 cents since my daughter bought one (a Reese's one). They skipped the whipped cream and cherry on our sundaes and gave us more ice cream instead, so again, I did not complain. It all tasted pretty good to me! I remember earlier in the Spring we had stopped by the Baskin-Robbins at McKnight and Manchester one