While there’s plenty of chatter out there about the return of Better.com’s CEO to its helm, and its interesting business model how LOs are supposedly not paid for closed loans but for how many they lock, I could tell that my cat Myrtle was miffed a few days ago. And I knew why: She figured out that I was not going to spend several hundred dollars to nominate her for some forgettable award. Now that a new year has begun, offers to nominate employees and producers are everywhere, and in some cases, lenders can nominate dozens of their employees at discounted bulk prices. I thought about explaining to Myrtle that she’d be better off with me spending those doubloons on line-caught salmon, or, in my opinion, that every lender would be better off spending their money on training, client retention software, or pricing concessions, rather than telling the world which producers their competitors should pick off. Of course, I was never big on giving a child a trophy just for
It’s Friday, things have slowed down a little bit, and I appreciate you taking a break from Wordle to check out today’s Commentary. Here’s a riddle: What’s bad when it is down, just right when it’s a little, and bad when it is too much? Answer: inflation. Inflation is really getting out of hand… That’s my three cents. The math is simple: if you’re earning 0 percent on your savings, the boss gave you a 5 percent raise, but inflation is 7 percent, you’re losing ground . Or perhaps the price is the same, but the size of your Egg McMuffin, Domino’s wing order, or toilet paper roll has shrunk: same thing. Sure you can use small amounts of your savings to cover up expenses like higher gasoline prices, but eventually it catches up. The labor markets are tight, demand remains elevated, and the effects of Covid are highly uncertain. Investors demand a higher yield, and the demand for cash increases as companies need to borro