Borrowing Advice | BorrowingAdvice.com

What is Debt Burden?

walter — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:48:40 +0000

When it’s used as a personal finance term, “debt burden” refers to your cost of borrowing money. Each of the ways you borrow money – credit cards, home mortgages, car loans and student loans are the most common – will incur some type of finance charge, and sometimes a given debt or credit account will incur multiple types of charges. In addition to an interest charge, there may also be account servicing fees, transactional fees, as well as late fees if you don’t make payments as required by the terms of your loan. It’s important to distinguish between your debt...

Borrowing Advice Money Saving Strategies for 2013

walter — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:17:15 +0000

Everyone wants to save more money, but with all the things we have competing for our attention, it can be difficult to figure out how to get started. Particularly if you’ve already spent a lot of time focusing on how to increase your savings, you may think that you’re currently implementing just about every strategy you know of. But it’s quite likely you could be doing more, because saving money can come in many different forms. Adding funds to build up your savings and investment accounts is what we usually think of as “saving,” but you can also save money...

What To Do When You Need To Borrow Money Quickly

walter — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:27:00 +0000

Even if you’ve done a great job in coming up with a solid budget and are sticking to it, there may still be times when you find yourself in a financial bind. Perhaps it’s because of an unexpected expense that exceeds what you have in your emergency fund. Or perhaps it’s simply something else for which you don’t want to use your emergency savings. In these cases, you may need to borrow money quickly. As you might expect, you’ll end up paying more for a quick notice loan than you would for other types of borrowing. But if you follow...

What to Expect At Mortgage Closing Day for Your Home

walter — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:02:49 +0000

Buying a home is the biggest single financial transaction that most people will make over the course of their lives. Even if you’ve never gone through the process before, many of the steps are going to make sense right away; you figure out how much you can afford, look for homes in your price range and negotiate an acceptable price with the seller. But what should you expect on the “closing day” – the day on which the home actually becomes yours and you put yourself on the hook for your mortgage? While the closing process isn’t particularly complicated it...

Advice on How to Manage Your Mortgage

walter — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:22:27 +0000

Your home is likely to be the most valuable and important thing you own. Your home provides you with shelter, security and a place to raise your family. When we think of managing a home, we usually think about maintenance and upkeep, cleaning, and making sure the utility bills get paid on time. But it's also important that we devote the same level of attention to managing our mortgages. The proper way to manage a mortgage will depend a great deal on how big your mortgage is, your other financial obligations, and your overall financial situation. Here is some mortgage...

5 Major Mortgage Mistakes to Avoid

walter — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:50:45 +0000

Buying a home remains one of the largest financial transactions that anyone will make in their life. We often tend to pay a significant amount of attention to negotiating the best possible home price, but we don’t always pay enough attention to the terms of the mortgage that we get to actually buy the home. The mortgage process itself can be a little stressful, even under the best of circumstances. In order to make sure that the process goes as smoothly as possible, and that you wind up with the best deal for your budget there are several mistakes that...

Borrowing Advice on How Much House Can You Afford

walter — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:38:25 +0000

One of the first steps in buying a new home is to figure out your price range. Unless you know how much house you can afford, you won’t know which homes to look at or consider. Because buying a home is such a large transaction, it’s important to have the good idea of what’s an appropriate price range for you. Calculating home affordability takes into account a number of different factors relating to your personal finances. You’ll need to consider not only your income, but also your other expenses and financial obligations. You also need to consider whether you...

What are the Consequences of Bankruptcy?

walter — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 15:09:40 +0000

From time to time you may see ads on television or on Internet websites that promise to help you eliminate all of your debts by declaring personal bankruptcy. The ad pitch often makes it sound as if going through the bankruptcy process is easy, and that you’ll wind up coming out of bankruptcy in great financial shape. It’s true that for some individuals it might become necessary to declare bankruptcy, but it should generally be considered as an option of last resort. There are a number of financial consequences to bankruptcy, and some of them can impact your financial situation...

How Should You Organize Your Finances Once You’ve Bought a House?

walter — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 14:46:04 +0000

Buying a home is one of the most significant financial decisions you’ll ever make in your life. In order to come up with a large enough down payment (and to cover the closing costs on the transaction), you’ll have to get a good handle on your finances and map out a plan for saving up the amount you need. But owning a home also requires you to organize your finances in order to pay for the maintenance and upkeep of your new house on an ongoing basis. Home ownership has an entirely different set of financial responsibilities as compared to...

The Importance of Doing a Home Inspection Before You Buy

walter — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:08:12 +0000

Buying a new home is an exciting – though sometimes a little overwhelming – process. For a first time home buyer, the transaction is likely to be even more emotionally charged. Owning a home represents a big part of the American dream, and has the potential to provide homeowners with a stable path to financial independence. Despite the emotional weight of buying a new home, it’s important that you also approach the process with a businesslike demeanor. This means conducting appropriate due diligence into the home to make sure that it’s everything it looks to be. Perhaps the most significant...