The Magnolia Standard in 5 Minutes
Realistic Money, October 10: Mortgages at 7.40, a big Wednesday ahead

This is Realistic Money from The Magnolia Standard, the Saturday column, read aloud. It's Saturday, October tenth.

Stocks had a good week. Mortgage rates had a bad one. And next week brings two dates that matter to anyone on Social Security or Medicare.

Start with the house payment. On Thursday, Freddie Mac's weekly survey put the average thirty-year mortgage at seven point four zero percent. A week earlier, seven point two eight. A year ago, six point three zero.

Mortgage rates follow the ten-year Treasury yield more than the Fed. A Realtor dot com economist said the ten-year averaged about five point two eight percent this week.

Here's what that does. Principal and interest only. On a two hundred sixty thousand dollar loan over thirty years, the payment a year ago was about sixteen hundred nine dollars a month. This week, about eighteen hundred.

That's about a hundred ninety-one dollars more each month, close to twenty-three hundred dollars a year, for the same loan.

If your mortgage is fixed and already signed, none of this changes your payment. It changes the math on refinancing, and on what the next buyer of your house can borrow.

Stocks went the other way. The S and P five hundred closed Friday at seven thousand eight hundred eleven, up about one percent for the week and near its record. The Dow and the Nasdaq rose too.

Oil had a reason close to home. Reuters said companies shut more than seventy percent of crude production in U.S. Gulf waters as Hurricane Isaias moved toward the northern Gulf. Brent settled Friday at about a hundred four dollars and seventy cents a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, about ninety-one eighty-five.

Quickly, the rest. Gold traded near forty-one hundred eighty dollars an ounce Friday, and silver near sixty dollars forty, both up about two percent. Bitcoin was about eighty-two thousand four hundred dollars, roughly thirty-eight thousand below a year ago.

The Federal Reserve meets October twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth. The range is three and three quarters to four percent.

Now Wednesday. That morning the government publishes September consumer prices. That release also sets next year's Social Security raise.

The method is simple. Take the average of one price index, the one for wage earners, over July, August and September. Compare it with the same three months last year. The percentage increase is the raise.

AARP forecasts three point six percent. The Senior Citizens League says three point five. This year's raise was two point eight.

On a two thousand dollar check, three and a half percent is seventy dollars a month. Every tenth of a point is two dollars.

But for most retirees on Medicare, the Part B premium comes out of the same deposit. It's two hundred two dollars and ninety cents this year. Next year's hasn't been set. The trustees projected two hundred nine fifty. If that holds, the deposit grows by about sixty-three dollars, not seventy.

Nobody has to file anything. The raise shows up in January.

Thursday, Medicare's open enrollment begins. It runs through December seventh. That's the window to change a health plan or a drug plan for next year.

For the standard drug benefit, the most a plan can charge as a deductible goes from six hundred fifteen dollars to seven hundred. And the yearly cap on what someone pays out of pocket for covered drugs goes from twenty-one hundred to twenty-four hundred.

Picture someone whose drug costs eight hundred dollars a month at full price. In twenty twenty-seven, their share stops at twenty-four hundred for the year. That's three hundred more than this year, before premiums.

The letter to look for is the Annual Notice of Change. It lists next year's premium, deductible and drug list. A drug that falls off the list stops counting toward the cap.

And if nobody does anything? A plan that's still offered carries into next year with its new costs. A plan that's leaving Medicare sends a non-renewal notice this month, and anyone in it who doesn't pick a new one can face a gap starting January first.

Texas runs free Medicare counseling through a program called HICAP. The number is one, eight hundred, two five two, nine two four zero. The counselors don't sell plans.

If nobody in the house does anything: a signed fixed mortgage stays where it is, a Medicare plan that's still offered rolls forward, and the Social Security raise arrives on its own in January.

That's Realistic Money. It's not financial, tax or legal advice, and the paper holds no position in anything mentioned. Every number, with its source, is at the magnolia standard dot news.

Written by our newsroom, voiced by computer.