I’m ashamed to admit, but until recently I thought that subprime mortgages meant variable mortgages with rates “prime minus x%”, like the one we have. So I went around telling people that we had a subprime mortgage (!), while in fact we have stellar credit ratings and we made a 15% downpayment on our condo.

Still, our mortgage rate is subprime – prime minus 0.75%. Linguistically, you can’t say I’m a total idiot.

Now I know subprime it means “money loaned to borrowers who do not qualify for market interest rates because of problems with their credit history”, typically with 0-5% money down. I guess those are less-than-prime people? I’d expect something more politically correct from America, heh.