If you have a 401k account, you have a down payment for your home.

Contact the person who handles your 401k account and ask them about information for borrowing against your 401k.  Most 401k plans allow you to borrow against the value of the account.  Generally, the max you can borrower is 50% of the current value.  This will be a loan borrowed to yourself, because the money you pay back goes right back into the 401k account.  I believe the average interest rate you pay on the money borrowed is around 6%.

Lenders allow you to use this money as the downpayment for your home, so take advantage of it.  They don’t count the debt against you in the total debt to income ratio and they only ask that you show that the funds came from your 401k account.

This option for a down payment on a home is overlooked all to often.

This is certainly more geared towards the guys, but once I saw the headline it made me want to read and share with everyone.

It’s a list of 5 things you can learn about credit from popular gangster movies.

Here is the link, enjoy!  Credit Advice From Gangster Flicks

Not exactly credit advice or mortgage advice, but thought I’d share the funniest Master Card commercial.

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Mortgage rates will go up this year.  (yes, a bold statement)

The government has been tapering off the purchase of mortgage backed securities and will finish at the end of the first quarter of 2010.  We all know that since the government started to purchase mortgage backed securities back in early 2009,the mortgage rates first dropped, and stayed, in the low 5 percent’s/upper 4 percent’s.

How Credit Card Debt Affects Your Credit Scores (popular article)

Even today, we are still at historic low mortgage rates, but this party will come to an end.  Probably faster than most of us are even anticipating.  The only question that remains is, “How much will the mortgage rates rise?”, not “if” they are going to rise.

It’s extremely hard to say how investors will react to the sudden stop of the government’s actions, but the inevitable of mortgage rates rising will happen.

If you are considering a mortgage refinance into a lower rate, now is the best, and probably the only, time to lock in those historic low mortgage rates.

Read more about mortgage rates at:  History of the mortgage rates.

A mortgage refinance is very important, because the interest rates have been at histoic lowes for so long.  Everyday, it seems I hear more and more that the interest rates will increase later this year, because the government has announced they will taper off the purchase of mortgage backed securities.  This action will have a direct affect on mortgage rates.

The best mortgage advice I can give about a refinance, would be to ask yourself this question, “How long do I plan on having this mortgage?”

This is one of the most important questions, because the amount of costs you are paying for a refinance and the amount of interest you will save by lowering your rate can all be justifiyed by the amount of time you will have this mortgage.

If you are unsure on how long you will own the home, then figure out a minimum amount of years you plan on owning and base your number on the minimum.  If you have a range of 7-10 years, then count on having the mortgage for 7 years and that’s it.  It’s best to play it safe versus taking a gamble, because we all know life happens and you may not end up owning the home for the latter part of the range.

Once you have figured out how many years you plan on having the mortgage, then it’s time to figure out when the savings makes sense to refinance.

Here is a post that helps explain when a mortgage refinance makes sense:  

When Should I Refinance My Mortgage?