Mortgage Rates Climb Applications Fall

If you were thinking about refinancing your mortgage and been dragging your feet (or maybe your bank has been), refinancing may be less attractive than it was a week or two ago. The 30 year fixed rate was about 4.81% last week. This week it has jumped right around 9% up to 5.25%. Granted this is still at a historically low level, but if you were meaning to lock in a low refi rate, you may want move quickly. There are still some banks out there with low rates, just make sure you crunch the numbers and take into account the closing costs and/or points the lender may be charging. As usual, Bankrate is a good place to start your search for the lowest national and local rates.

A calculator for this, a calculator for that

If you haven't noticed I like online calculators because 1) they do a lot of the work for me and 2) they are less prone to mistyped figures and generally take a greater number of factors into consideration than I can without creating an Excel spreadsheet.

With that said there are three more calculators that I think people may find useful. Both are from Bankrate.com which really has a ton of useful stuff if you can wade through it all. The first calculator crunches the numbers on what price house you can afford. The second calculator will help you figure out how much you have to sock away (and let you change the interest rate) to reach a designated savings goal (FYI: $22 a day invested in a 5% savings account like HSBC will net you a cool million 40 years from now).

The third calculator for those of you in the market for a home or wondering if it is worth it will help you decide based on the mortgage price you are interested in, your current rent payment, and your down payment when a house payment becomes more attractive than your current rent. It breaks down the payments and closing costs (with rough estimates) and shows you where the tipping point is between renting vs buying. Head over the youngmoney.com to check it out.