Planet Money: Zombie 2nd Mortgages

On August 20th, 1857 a ship set sail from the Port of San Francisco with 600 people and thousands of pounds of gold. That gold was destined for the vaults of New York City banks, but it never made it. Instead, the ship sank to the bottom of the ocean, taking all that gold with it ...  Show more

Across the West, there's a contentious debate playing out over how to adapt homes and neighborhoods to this era of increasingly extreme wildfire risk. In Berkeley, California, it's become a particularly emotional fight because of a very specific architectural history that began a ...  Show more

Karen McDonough of Quincy, Mass., was enjoying her tea one morning in the dining room when she saw something odd outside her window: a group of people gathering on her lawn. A man with a clipboard told her that her home no longer belonged to her. It didn't matter that she'd been ...  Show more

You don't have to be a die-hard The Walking Dead fan to appreciate the allusion for this week's podcast. As financial advisors, we can draw parallels between a fictitious zombie apocalypse and the type of real apocalypse that debt can cause in people's lives. Tune in to this wee ...  Show more

The average interest rate charged by mortgage lenders is now much higher than many homeowners have been used to.

So what can those struggling to make repayments do - and what if any help should lenders provide?

The experts in this podcast are Charles Roe, Director ...