December 2014

California’s Insurance Commissioner is fuming at one of the state’s largest insurance providers over excessive rate hikes.  The premiums were charged to over 5,000 small businesses, and reportedly cost employers and their employees over $23.5 million in extreme rate hikes.

Dave Jones says Aetna Inc. imposed rate hikes as high as 20 percent on some businesses.  The state believed a 2.6 percent hike was justifiable for the estimated 64,000 Californian employees that depend on coverage from the third largest private insurer in the state.

It was a very Merry Christmas for one family living in New York.  A simple envelope was given by a son to his parents, who opened the envelope to find a check that was large enough to cover the remainder of their mortgage.

Many Americans spent much of the final quarter in 2014 worried about their fiscal plans for the future.  This concern was perhaps no clearer than on Wall Street, where stocks slid to triple digit losses per day as oil prices plummeted, and the Federal Reserve prepared to outline a plan for interest rates.

Falling oil prices are providing significant relief for drivers at the gas pumps, a trend that is expected to continue in the first quarter of 2015.  But the lower price of oil may provide another indirect form of relief through lower mortgage rates.

Oil prices have been falling all year, and entered a freefall since the end of the summer.  Coincidentally, 30 year fixed mortgage rates were posted at an average of 4.06 percent last week.  The Mortgage Bankers Association says the 30 year plan is the lowest posted rate in 18 months.