Buy a house or refinance one now

I am refinancing my house. The time is right. Interest rates are at historic lows so you don't want to miss out. Plus there is the homebuyer tax credit. If you can muster up the cash and are fortunate enough to still have a job, refinance or buy a house now. Currently, the interest rate on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage is 5.02% and on a 15 year fixed rate mortgage its 4.55%.

Your credit rating must be over 700 to get these rates. I will talk more about mortgages and credit scores in another post but I want to make sure you don't miss the boat. Don't worry, I believe that rates will be low for sometime. At least until the middle of 2011 and if your not ready then they still will be lower than rates of 10-12%.

The best advice I ever received about buying a house is that it costs nothing to go and look. Even if you don't have any money take a drive on a Sunday afternoon and look in on some of the open houses, see what you like or don't like just to get some ideas. Have fun with it and watch what happens to your thinking. Need some inspiration, click here.

Our Relationship With Money

The thing that is most important to me about money is keeping it in perspective. The author that has done the best in this respect is Suze Orman. While I think she is the most knowledgeable about the current changes in law that effect our money she also has had an impact on the way we relate to money.

It is hard to deal with money issues if you don't get down to the root cause. Achieving success in this area is done, according to Suze, by first releasing our attachment to money itself. In her book, "The Laws of Money", she states that money has no power of its own. This statement is Law #5.

I listened to a recording of a seminar that she gave and the first thing that she had participants do was talk about their very first experiences with money as a child. Then she told everyone to take out a dollar bill and rip it in half. If you can't distance yourself from the green stuff, you might want to read this book.

Feed the Pig

For awhile now I have subscribed to a newsletter that gives me tips on saving and cutting expenses. You may have seen the short ads on tv. The ads feature a man in a pink suit with a pig's head. The idea of the ads is to try and promote smart savings by cutting unessesary spending. I think the ads are catchy and fun.

The ads are sponsored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Ad Council. It seems a little odd now that we are in a recession and everyone is cutting back and saving. We needed to have these a couple of years back when things were really good.

The newsletter comes out once per week, usually on Monday, and the tips are really helpful and lead to links back to the website at http://www.feedthepig.org/

Enjoy the video.