I would like to prepay on my auto loan. My payments are $261 each month
 with a very high interest rate of 13.9%. I have paid all my other
 debts off and want to start getting the car paid early. I called the
 finance company and they told me all prepayments go to interest first. How
 does this work? Why prepay if I am just giving to interest? This extra
 payment would be above the normal payment. Example: Pay the payment of
 $261 and then write a separate check for $500 each month directed to go
 to principal only. Could you explain this to me?
Carol

In an ideal market, families with an annual median income of $69,800 should be able to afford a median-price, single-family home, but in DuPage County that’s only about half the wages needed to buy that $360,000 house, according to a new report.

At best, that income could support a home priced at $200,000, according to an official at the DuPage Homeownership Center, which issued its annual Labor Day Housing Affordability Index report Friday. And few of those homes are available in DuPage, real estate agents say.

No one has been more swept up in the euphoria of the overheated housing market of the last few years than cable television networks.

First came “Property Ladder” and “Flip That House” on Discovery’s TLC and “Flip This House” on the competing A&E Network. As home values soared, so did the number of real estate programs. TLC came up with “Real Estate Pros,” and A&E later served up “Sell This House.” Bravo jumped into the act this summer, introducing “Flipping Out.”

But what happens to all of these house-flipping shows now that the real estate market seems to be tanking?

Jackson Hole, Wyo. —- Is the long wait coming to an end for borrowers who would like to see interest rates go down?

The Federal Reserve hasn’t sliced a key interest rate —- now at 5.25 percent —- in four years.

Where the Fed is headed, at its next meeting on Sept. 18 and later, generated much buzz on the sidelines of an economic conference here. The gathering focused on housing, which has been in a deep slump.

WASHINGTON - It’s hard to know how scared to be if you don’t know the size of the threat. No, not terrorism, housing.

The U.S. mortgage-lending business is a sprawling, varied enterprise that no one regulator oversees, making it impossible to know how many mortgages or lenders whose deposits aren’t insured by the government are in trouble.

Even worse, no public records are available to show who holds the trillions of dollars in mortgages that investment banks pooled and sold as securities to investors around the globe. The value of many of those securities plunge as mortgage defaults soar.