Archive for Mortgage & Refinance

Using the Power of Mathematics to Avoid a Bad Interest Rate Swap Agreement

interest rate swap agreementThe following post was provided by guest contributor Andrada Mihailescu. If you are interested in being a guest contributor for My Money Design, please feel free to contact me

Math. For some people it sounds like fun. For other people, it sounds like a chore.

Have you ever wondered why there is so much emphasis on it from such early age? Why we spend so much time with all the numbers, symbols, and equations?

It turns out that as we get older, there is no escaping math. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an artist, engineer, plumber or university teacher – you’ll need to know your way with numbers.

 

Read more

Should I Pay Off My Mortgage Early or Look for a Better Return?

Should I Pay Off My Mortgage EarlyWhen I refinanced my house last winter, I thought I’d never see interest rates that low ever again. So imagine my surprise when almost a year later I’m noticing rates for a 15 year loan as low as 2.75%. Could you imagine a mortgage with a rate as low as 2.75%? That’s less than the average 3% inflation rate.

While all this sounds enticing, this has me wondering about my overall mortgage situation altogether. In previous posts, I’ve talked about how paying off your mortgage early could actually help your money design. But when it comes to investing, it’s always important to look at things from both sides of the fence. So in this post, we’re going to ask: Should I pay off my mortgage early or look for other opportunities with a better rate of return?

 

Read more

What’s Your Scariest Money Story?

scariest money storyIn keeping with the Halloween theme this week and the fact that this is a personal finance blog, I thought I’d combine those two aspects into a topic question for the day: What’s your scariest money story? It could be a story about something that happened to you in real life or an actual nightmare you had money. Either way will work.

 

Read more

Which Is Better – Rental Income or a Stock Market Index Fund?

Who’s ready for some financial smack-down? If there’s any two groups of investors I can think of that are more divided, it’s those who invest in real estate and those who invest in stocks – like a North and the South of financial planning if you will.

So the question here is this: Which one actually has a better chance of making you more money in the long run?  This may be a controversial debate, but we’re going to settle this argument the MyMoneyDesign way – by running the numbers!  So let’s see what we come up with …

Read more

How Much Money Would I Make If I Rented Out A House?

When it comes to buying stocks, the old rule of thumb is to “buy low and sell high”. If you’re fortunate enough to understand this saying, then you’ll know that it doesn’t just apply to stocks. It’s meant to teach you to look for opportunities.

So even though the value of my home seems to go down, down, down every year, perhaps therein lies an opportunity. As I walk the dog through my neighborhood, there is an abundance of houses for sale. And what’s more is that I KNOW they are selling for FAR less than what I paid for mine. So this gets me thinking:

• If I have any aspirations to buy a house and rent it out, is now the time?

Read more

Dos and Don’ts in Mortgage

Are you looking to buy a house? The purchase of your home may be the largest expenditure you will have in your life. Therefore, applying for a home loan is a process that you should not take lightly. The cost of a house is just your beginning expense. Points and the interest you must pay for a mortgage during the term of your loan will be much more than the price of the house. That’s why paying attention to the details of your home loan may turn out to be more important than the sale price of the home.

To get the most out of your mortgage, consider the following:

Read more

Tips for Building a House Into a Great New Home

tips for building a house

Building your new home can be a fun and exhilarating process! You get to pick how everything will look – inside and out! But there are also many mistakes that can be made along the way.  Here are some tips for building a house and making it into a great home.

Read more

Before Retirement, Eliminate Your Biggest Expense

Frequently when you think of planning for retirement or becoming financially free in general, you think about how much money you’ll need to save in order to generate the kind of income that you’re use to. For example, how can I save $1,250,000 so that I can draw 4% and take out $50,000 each year?

In this post, we’ll look at the other side of the coin. Instead, we’ll look for a way to reduce how much income you’ll actually need while on your own. And how will we do this? By focusing in on one of your largest expenses – your mortgage.

Read more

Adventures in Refinancing, Chapter 5

I’m very proud to announce that this chapter will end our story on getting a refinance. As of Monday, we finally closed on our new mortgage under the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP)!

Here’s what has been going on since last time:

Our Home Appraisal:

So after the initial consultation and deposit, there was not a lot to do except wait until the estimator came back with his appraisal of our house. And so we waited, and waited, …

And after 8 years of not “really” knowing how much our house was worth, we finally received an official home appraisal as part of the process. How did we do? Bum-badda-baaa (victorious trumpets sounding ….):

Read more

Which is Better – Points or No Points on Your Mortgage?

Mortgage, points, closing fees, interest, debt, future value, refinanceAs if understanding all the basics of a mortgage like interest rates, amortization, escrow, and PMI weren’t complex enough, there comes one more product that really convolutes the entire process even further: points.

Like all of the items mentioned above, knowing whether or not to purchase points can have significant long-term implications on how much money you may actually save or lose throughout the life of the mortgage. This post is going to explain how all that works and I’ll even give you a Microsoft Excel worksheet to try it out yourself.

Read more