Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with fixed

How much notice do I need to give? (France, fixed term contract)

handee — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:43:10 -0800

How much notice do I have to give at work? I'm in France, and my contract lasts 1 year. I'm employed in France on a fixed term contract (a CDD - Contrat duree determinee). I'm half way through so I've started applying for other jobs. The job application form I'm currently working on wants to know my notice period. I have no idea, and it's not in my contract. (Just in case my boss reads this: I have every intention of staying to the end of the contract, I just need this for the form.) I think the law covering my contract is this one: article 86-83, but my French is not quite up to the job of finding the information in that page...

CSSFilter: Webkit won't keep my elements in their fixed width container.

geos — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:44:07 -0800

CSSFilter: I am building a wordpress site that uses a basic two column layout with floating div elements inside a fixed-width div . Any clues why Safari and Chrome appear to be ignoring the fixed-width container div allowing the interior elements to float away to the edges of the browser? Explorer and Firefox aren't doing this. I'll admit that the template is now a total hack, but I'm hoping there's some well-known quirk or mistake that would cause webkit to ignore the container. If it's any help, the floating elements are right up at edge of the browser window without any padding...

Help me save money on a mortgage.

halogen — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:24:51 -0800

Mortgage filter: is there any reason I shouldn't get a 5/1 ARM at a slightly lower interest rate than the 30-year fixed option? Asking for Dad.

I am buying a $247,000 foreclosed townhouse in Houston, TX with $50,000 down. I am financing $197,000 and currently have the following offers for mortgages (closing date is December 3rd, so I don't have much time):

A 5/1 ARM with an interest rate of 5.25% through ING direct. They have relatively few fees ($3,000 or so closing costs, no escrow, etc.), but unfortunately I do not have a crystal ball and don't know what interests rates will be in five years. (Current plans are for us to live in the new house for longer than five years.)

A 30 year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.625% with a local broker. My payments with the fixed-rate mortgages will be approximately $50-60 more a month, adding up to about $3,000 over five years. The broker has not been particularly upfront about fees (they keep changing on a daily basis), but it this loan will be more expensive than through ING Direct. My real estate agents says that I should go for the fixed-rate mortgage if I don't mind paying an extra $60 a month for the security of a low interest rate.

Hive mind, which option should I choose? Any additional advice when choosing a mortgage is also welcome, since I have never bought a home before.

Do ARM's really save you money?

rouftop — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:27:47 -0800

Have you used a 7/1 or 10/1 ARM to your financial advantage? My wife and I spoke with a lender today who presented an argument that longer-term ARM's (7/1 or 10/1 terms) were potentially a very good investment. In this case, it was a 7/1, that increased 4 points from years 8-11 and capped there. (So this is not a subprime fiasco where interest rates go up 10%+ after 1-2 years or anything like that.)

His view is that if you're disciplined, you can use that money toward home improvements to increase your equity, or invest in stocks (risky) or even CD's (not risky) and get a better rate of return on your money over those years. And the chances that we'd sell or refinance before 7 years are so high that the fear of the ARM "coming due" are pretty unlikely. (His stats claimed that 99% of all homebuyers sold or refinanced in the first 7 years.) Finally, even if it did come due, we'd have more equity so refinancing would still lower our payments.

Our view is that we certainly can be disciplined about the extra money (not a problem for us) but that interest rates are pretty low right now. They might go down, sure, and then we could refinance, but once we hit historical lows for interest rates we're going to want to be in a fixed-rate loan because the chances of refinancing 7 years later with better rates is small to zero.

But I also feel we're thinking inside the box. We're first timers so we don't fully grok the nuances of things like having more equity when you do refinance, etc.

So... has anybody here successfully employed this strategy with their home purchases? Or found it not to be as great as advertised?

How to ride a single speed on an indoor trainer

mizrachi — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 08:56:17 -0800

Can a single speed or track bicycle without a rear quick release skewer work on my minoura vfs fluid trainer? I'm afraid that without the skewer for the trainer to grip onto the bike would come flying off.

What are the toughest tubes I can get for my (most likely) inappropriate bike tires?

Bengston — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:03:27 -0800

What are the toughest tubes I can get for my (most likely) inappropriate bike tires? Ok, so a couple of weeks ago I decided to turn my nice old Schwinn Sports Tourer into a fixed gear bike. To do this I needed to get a new wheel set and for whatever dumb reason I decided to get another set of 27" wheels instead of switching over to the much more common 700 size. I didn't want to end up with another pair of 1-1/4" tires for the bike so I ordered some 27 x 7/8" FasGrip Slicks from Harris Cyclery. Unfortunately they are nearly impossible to get on the rims and require 2 people to push the last bit of them over the edge. Now, just a couple days after getting the bike all setup, I woke up to find a mysterious flat. Despite my ride home the night previous going off without a hitch, when I went to take the bike to school in the morning I found that the valve on the tube was nearly completely torn off. I don't want to have to buy new fatter tires to protect my tubes and end up sinking even more money into this bike, so I am looking for recommendations for a miracle tube that will be tough enough for me not to worry about.

my mantra

whatitis — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 05:44:06 -0800

Where can I purchase this particular (NSFW, cursing) sticker?! The owner of the bike lives in Minneapolis and says it was on the frame when he purchased it, and it was there when the owner before that purchased it as well. Total shot in the dark, but I love it too much to let the dream die.

p.s. - just to avoid confusion, not interested in the monkey sticker.

CSS horizontal navigation bar spacing question

Danelope — Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:34:28 -0800

Can CSS be used to transform an unordered list of links into a horizontal navigation bar which occupies a fixed (total) width but has equidistant padding between each link, regardless of content length? ( css layout tooth-grinding insanity ) Semantically, a navigation bar is a list of links and should therefore be rendered using <ul>. As such, I am attempting to produce an unordered list that occupies a fixed width (i.e. 450px) but want the padding between each list item to be equal. The padding also needs to be variable, because the text of each link might change, so fixed-width <li>s will not suffice.

Figure 01, List of links sans padding

Figure 02, List of links with equidistant padding x

Any ideas how this might be accomplished? The most irritating part is that I can achieve the desired effect in two minutes using a table.