Are You Just Holding On Financially?

Mortgage refinancing is sometimes a last-ditch effort to prevent foreclosure. With rising fuel prices, tough times in the job market, and the ever-increasing price of health care and other essentials, the average family is feeling the pinch. For many, it is still a viable option to look at mortgage refinancing.

If your month seems to have outgrown your money, there are a number of things you can try before taking the step of refinancing your mortgage. Cut back on as many of the "little things" as you possibly can.

Disconnect the cable TV, cancel the newspaper and magazine subscriptions, check your credit card statements for small regular deductions you may have forgotten that you authorized, and especially keep a close eye out for insurance companies which have cancelled your policy in the past, but keep deducting the premiums even though they have no intention of ever paying should you make a claim.

Weather-proof your home to reduce heating and cooling costs. Fill those cracks, clean out the gutters, make use of blinds and curtains, and consider planting or pruning trees to provide shade and sun in the right places to help your home balance its temperature.

Audit your driving habits and weekly routine - now is the time to start changing our patterns to reduce gas consumption! Not only will you save money, you can feel virtuous about helping to reduce greenhouse gases and save the planet from global warming.

Once you have pulled together all the savings you can possibly identify, and your month still stretches beyond your money, then mortgage refinancing may be the next step.

If your home has gone up in value since you bought it, if interest rates have fallen, or if you have paid off a reasonable portion of your mortgage though having made payments regularly for many years, then refinancing may be a way to gain some much-needed breathing space each month.

Mortgage refinancing can also provide a cash lump sum in some cases - if you apply this to paying off credit cards and other high-interest loans, you can gain a surprising amount of wiggle room. Just make sure you don't run up the cards again, because mortgage refinancing may not be an option a second time!