My home equity line of credit (HELOC) amount owed has now grown to where it is approximately double the amount remaining on my mortgage and the interest payments are killing me. I have no other debt. The total amount owed, remaining mortgage plus HELOC, is far less (probably about 50%) than what the house is worth.   Using any basic mortgage calculator, if I add the amounts together as the new 'mortgage', the monthly payments are only slightly more than what I am currently paying for my mortgage alone.   Our family income is quite substantial, and I am not worried about losing the house. However, it seems that I'm spinning my wheels by paying off the mortgage, and (barely) chipping away at the HELOC.  What would be the best way to consolidate these two debts?
120993
I have a credit card with 30% interest and a real estate loan with 11% interest. The amount of debt on my card is lower than the real estate loan.   I want to redeem the installments of the real estate loan, but I can't do it because the credit card debt takes all my money.    What can I do in this situation? How can I get out of the debt-trap as quickly as possible?   I have a 4-room house and 2 cars, and 2 children who have to go to school, that's why there are a lot of fix expenses.
119966
In the area I currently live, we are experiencing massive population growth.  Land and house prices haven't risen as fast as rent, to the point that renting is now at least 3-4x as expensive per square foot as owning.  This makes saving a down payment very difficult while renting.  Given these conditions, would it make sense to buy with 0 down when I can get double the space and pay less even with PMI than my current rent?  Additional info:  rent on a 1 bedroom apartment in my area is currently around $1600, but I can find decent houses in the 175k-225k range.  Financing even with 0 down is no problem to obtain.  I have been unsuccessful in finding any roommates who could split the cost of a larger unit.  To clarify, I am looking for the lowest cost place to live.  Rent continues to climb, where mortgage payments would be fixed.  I do not consider the house an investment, so even if, say after 3 years I had to sell at a bit of a loss, I consider it a win if the total amount paid for the house, upkeep, taxes, selling costs, etc are a lower total than the rent would be over the same period.  I have owned before so am familiar with the additional costs of renting vs owning, and do most maintenance myself.  I guess what I really want to know is, how do you figure out where the line is?  How high does rent have to get so that it would be better to buy?
100779
I have a card that is 50% used with 7% interest. The max credit limit on the card is $10,000, and I used $5000. I have another card that is $14,000 and I have $2900 used, but the interest is 14.9%. I want to move the $2900 card to the other card that has a lower interest rate (7%). This will bring the balance close to the max, but the idea is to focus on this one card and bring the balance down as quickly as possible. is this a wise choice? I am looking to purchase a house in 6 months so I thought that this might be enough time to pay it off and keep my score up. My scores are currently in the low 700s.
123427
I am in my late 20s, living in the UK, and in my third year of professional work (one year industrial placement, two years since graduating from University). I have very little in the way of monthly expenditure at the moment- living in a house share (with very cheap rent), most bills included in rent, and have pretty much reached the limits on which the various bank accounts I have open will pay interest.  Since graduating, I have been saving using a few different current accounts which pay interest on balances up to a certain limit (a few of which have conditions that you have a number of Direct Debits going out from those accounts in order to receive interest on the balance of the account).  But since I am now at the point where I am earning interest on the maximum balance for most of these accounts, I am starting to look at other ways to save/ invest, but I'm just not really sure what to look into/ what the best options to explore are.  I have already opened: Santander 123 account, Bank of Scotland Classic Account with Vantage, TSB Classic Plus account and a Club Lloyds account, as well as having an ISA and one or two Regular Savers on-going. I am maintaining the maximum balance that you can receive interest on in each of these current accounts. My ISA matured recently (3 years paying 3.75%), and that balance is now sat in a Flexible ISA (earning 0.8%) while I explore what's best to do with it.  I take home roughly 1k per month after tax, rent and other regular outgoings such as food, travel, leisure, student loan repayments, phone/ broadband, etc.  I am at the point financially where I have saved enough to have a reasonable deposit on a house, but am not at the point in life where I want to commit to being a home-owner for a couple of reasons:    My work is contract based, so there's no guarantee that I will be working in the same location as I am at the moment, this time next year (in fact that's looking less and less likely, as the current contract is coming to an end, and there's some uncertainty as to when the client will begin the next contract- government projects). It would not be unrealistic to think that I may be in the situation where I don't have any work at all in a few months time, and so I am currently applying for other jobs. Having gone through the usual cycle of school- university- job, etc... I am thinking that now would potentially be a good time to look into doing some travelling, so I would rather not pursue buying a house for the moment, in case I do decide to do some travelling for a year or so.   I have recently started watching the stock prices of a few companies to get an idea of investing in the stock market, but feel like I need to research this &amp; watch the values for a while before I go ahead and invest in any shares.  I have a credit card, which I pay off monthly, but other than that, the only debt I have is my student loan (approximately £25,000).  So, given my situation, are there any other ways that I can save/ invest that I am not currently doing? Or would it be best to start using any excess funds, that I won't earn any interest on, to pay off my student loan quicker? The interest that my student loan is incurring is currently 0.9%.
89233
This reads a bit like a home-work question, but this is actually my situation. The job I've taken is a BYOD (bring your own device), workplace and I prefer to use my own equipment.   I've just started a new job and need to buy a new laptop within the next 4 weeks. I can purchase a laptop up front for $1,500.00 or buy one one with 12-months "interest-free" finance for $2,000.00 with up-front fees of $80.00 I currently have a home-loan with an outstanding principal of $400,000.00. My interest rate is 4% and house prices increased by 5.7% in my area during the last year. The remaining term of the loan is 30 years. Currently, I make extra payments towards my home loan equal to $3,000.00 per month.   Question: is there any advantage to purchasing the more-expensive laptop using finance, as opposed to purchasing the cheaper laptop now? Assume that I will repay the price of the laptop within the 12-month period and the money that I would have otherwise spent on the laptop will be used to repay the home loan.
2546
My mortgage came up for renewal right at the time in 2009 when UK interest rates hit rock bottom. This was unprecidented, and most financial advice was to take out a fixed-rate mortgage. So I perhaps went overboard and got one for ten years.  Five years on, interest rates haven't moved and I'm losing money on it to the tune of £100 a month. Obviously, this is ongoing: so that decision has cost me about £5000 in real terms so far. It'll come to a lot more by the end of the mortgage, unless interest rates rise.  Being fixed rate, it's been designed so you can't get out early. If I decide to end the mortage, it'll cost me £1,000 per year of the mortgage remaining - which is roughly what I'm losing anyway, so that seems a bad idea.   I can overpay by up to £500 per month. However, doing this doesn't help pay down the mortgage at all: the total is just added up and will cause the mortgage to end early, by a period dependent on the overpayment total.   This seems to me to be a very bad idea because hoping interest rates rise over the next five years is the only hope I have of making good on some of the losses that I've made.   Is this sensible thinking? If so, is there anything at all I can do to try and ameliorate the financial pain this product is causing me?
96770
I purchased a home and I made an agreement with a guy who is living in that home and paying me monthly rent. Since I live with my brother I don't have to live in my purchased home.  The rent I'm getting is only 10% of total cost of home while stock fund industry (mutual fund) is paying 20% minimum i.e. I'm getting 10% loss every year and that is a big amount.  I'm not really sure if my home also increase it's value by 10% every year. But I don't think it will be.  Now I'm thinking of selling that home and investing all of my money in a growth mutual fund. Any advice?
104054
I am going to ask this oft repeated question one more time because:  I have heard many of my friends say that the best way to increase your credit score is to take a loan ( at an interest) and then pay it over a period of time. Their main point being that you have to pay real interest on a loan to increase your score. If you use a credit card and pay in full every month (and therefore pay zero interest) your score will not improve appreciably. I highly doubt this, can you confirm or refute.
84129
I currently have a 4.5% mortgage with a balance of $247,000, and am going to refinance. However, my situation is a little atypical in that I don't plan to live in the house more than 3-4 more years.  To minimize cash outflow I am considering a 5/1 ARM, and want to know how to evaluate the wisdom of "buying down" the interest rate.    I have one set of offers shown below, with a plethora of options for paying points up front in exchange for a lower rate.  If I choose the middle-of-the road option (2.75 rate) my break-even over the current loan is 12-13 months.    Given that my time frame is 3-5 years, how would I analyze this table to determine the "best" option?  My objective is to minimize total cash flow over, say, 48 months assuming any money not contributed to buying down the rate is earning 3.5%.  Also, there are fixed closing fees of $1932 in addition to the discount points.  Location is in the US Pacific Northwest.  Rather than just giving me a solution I'd prefer an explanation of how to calculate the solution on my own.  Current Loan Balance   $247,000 Current Interest Rate     4.50% Current Payment        $  1,282 Remaining term (months)     341                                   Discount Fee                                   ------------------   Rate    APR     New Pmt       Pct          $ ------  ------    -------     ------------------ 1.500%  2.776%    $852.45     4.53%   $11,189.00 1.625%  2.787%    $867.34     4.13%   $10,194.00 1.750%  2.798%    $882.39     3.72%    $9,196.00 1.875%  2.809%    $897.60     3.32%    $8,198.00 2.000%  2.820%    $912.96     2.91%    $7,200.00 2.125%  2.831%    $928.48     2.51%    $6,205.00 2.250%  2.837%    $944.15     2.05%    $5,054.00 2.375%  2.833%    $959.97     1.44%    $3,567.00 2.500%  2.845%    $975.95     1.05%    $2,586.00 2.625%  2.857%    $992.08     0.65%    $1,606.00 2.750%  2.866%  $1,008.36     0.23%      $561.00 2.875%  2.892%  $1,024.78    -0.14%     -$346.00 3.000%  2.934%  $1,041.36    -0.51%   -$1,257.00 3.125%  2.978%  $1,058.09    -0.88%   -$2,166.00 3.250%  3.021%  $1,074.96    -1.20%   -$2,966.00 3.375%  3.064%  $1,091.98    -1.50%   -$3,700.00 3.500%  3.108%  $1,109.14    -1.79%   -$4,429.00 3.625%  3.152%  $1,126.45    -2.09%   -$5,155.00 4.125%  3.330%  $1,197.08    -2.18%   -$5,392.00 4.250%  3.375%  $1,215.09    -2.42%   -$5,970.00 4.375%  3.420%  $1,233.23    -2.65%   -$6,548.00 4.500%  3.465%  $1,251.51    -2.84%   -$7,005.00
68977
I am a relatively new home owner, having purchased my first home in October 2009. Overall, I feel I got an excellent deal on the loan, which was 5% no-cost, no points, and 12% down. I had to take on PMI (mortgage insurance) since I was unable to put down a full 20%. This mortgage insurance is costing me a hefty $1752 per year, and I am wondering if there are any options for refinancing that would allow me to remove the PMI, despite not yet reaching that 80% loan-to-value ratio.
69876
I've found similar questions, but they all seem to focus on a preexisting 30 year mortgage and whether or not it makes sense to refinance to a 15.  My question is a bit different.  I have not yet bought a house but I am trying to decide which mortgage to go with.  As a result, I don't have to consider refinance fees and a change in interest rate.   The situation is that I can afford the payment on a 15 year mortgage and would prefer not to pay off a house for the next 30 years.  So I was going to go with a 15.  However, in looking at some mortgage calculators (which it is possible I am looking at incorrectly) it seems that there is no difference in getting a 30 year mortgage and just paying it off in 15 years.  The calculators seem to say that--assuming the same interest rate--you will pay the exact same interest over 15 years.  As a result, my thinking is, I can get the 30 and pay it like a 15.  If there really is no drawback then this gives me the ability to pay the normal 30 year payment if needed due to financial hardship (loss of employment etc.)  So my question is, am I missing something?  If not, why would anyone ever get a 15 year instead of just paying off a 30 year in 15 years?  In summary: Does it really cost the same amount of money overall to pay off a 15 year mortgage vs paying off a 30 year mortgage in 15 years?  PS: Please don't suggest taking the 30 year and investing the extra money.  I know this is an option and the one many would suggest.  However, for the purposes of this question please only consider 15 year vs 30 year paid off in 15.
10920
My son is currently in boot camp, and his ex-girlfriend is threatening to go to court because she wants her name off a car loan they got when together. She is the primary borrower, but my son is the one that kept it and is paying it after splitting up. Of course she wants him to refinance the loan, but we do not have the credit. How can we get her off the loan?
3669
I'm a US resident and I've saved &gt; $100k cash for a home deposit. I expect to finance a home in the next 12 months. Currently the cash is split between Bank savings account and a couple of money market accounts (like FMOXX). Are there higher yield, short term alternatives for this type of saving? Note I'm not after specific product recommendations, but general investment strategies for this type of situation.
43015
My wife and I are recently married, both of us are working hard. At the moment we currently have the same system as prior to our marriage. Which simply put is that both of have our own bank accounts and we split the costs between us.  We will soon be taking out a mortgage for a house. Any recommendations how to arrange our bank accounts in an intelligent system so that we can put our money together?
67368
I co-signed on a car loan with my partner, and now that we are no longer together I want to have my name removed. He has had the car a year now and has been on his job over an year, but he won't do the refinance to have my name removed, and I would like to know if there is something legally that I can do to have my name removed.
97277
I have had several business loans and understand that this is not by any means typical.  I noticed that for a year my payments were not decreasing the principal on the loan. When I asked the bank why, I found out that at some point my payments were getting applied to principal only. Now I am paying interest off that was not paid for 6 months or so.  My banker states that he can change all the interest payments to principal payments. I am confused to why this would be. If I make all my principal payments first then would the bank lose a substantial amount of interest?  This has happened on 2 of the 3 loans I have looked at so far.  If they are willing to change all the payments to principal only, would this be beneficial to paying less interest ultimately? I assume there would be an interest account accruing somewhere that would need to be paid off at the end of the loan.  I understand that typically you have a loan balance that would include interest and principal. My balance owed did not change when I continued to make same payment? It gets applied to interest. The balance on the statement must not be a true balance. There must be interest owed above the balance showed but why would they do this to start with? They applied full payments to principle only first in order for interest to get to be more than several payments
107491
My wife and I were planning to buy a house this year, but the plan fell through, so right now we are sitting on the money that we saved towards down payment and renovations (prior to now money was in the Money markets, Savings &amp; CDs). We decided to stop looking for a house for about a year, and resume next February, though if a nice deal shows up we want money easily available. So in our situation what is the best way to make sure we don't lose any principal, but to see that our money doesn't sit idle. CDs are pretty much out of the question: for a 6-9 months period interest is lower than savings. The best I was able to come up with (according to ) were:   - 1.2% + 10% on the interest earned.   - 1.15%   - 1.15%   According to their websites all of them are FDIC members. Are there any other options? I don't really know anything about bonds. Are they a viable option? Final Solution: My boss recommended I check out  ( they are a Texas bank with locations in CA, IL &amp; TX, obviously the website.) They are offering 2.02 % on a 60 months CD - but here is the kicker, if I need to pull the money before it matures, they only take the last 2 months of interest as a penalty. So I think that's a good solution for me. The website says they are FDIC insured and there are a brick and mortar branches not far from me. Update: This bank I mentioned, doesn't seem to exist anymore, through a series of purchases. So scratch that suggestion. Thank you everyone for your recommendations.