Free Online Mortgage Payment Calculator

A mortgage payment calculator is the first thing most people search for when considering refinancing a mortgage. Using a mortgage payment calculator, you can apply today's interest rate to the amount of your new mortgage, and find out what your new monthly mortgage payment will be.

You can easily find a mortgage payment calculator online. For example, this free mortgage payment calculator at Emergency Refinancing allows you to enter the interest rate, the term of the mortgage, and the mortgage principal amount, to calculate your new monthly mortgage payment.

The formula to calculate a monthly mortgage payment is one of those horrible bits of high school Math that most people try to forget as soon as they have sat the exam - if not before - so there is really no alternative for most people, than to use a mortgage payment calculator.

You may find that your spreadsheet software has a function which will calculate monthly payments for a mortgage, although in most cases an online mortgage payment calculator is easier to find - and simpler to use!

As a rule of thumb, your mortgage payment should amount to no more than a third of your after-tax income. This will ensure that your mortgage payment is affordable.

You can use the mortgage payment calculator to work out how much you can afford to borrow. Simply enter the interest rate and term of the loan, and then adjust the amount of the principal until the mortgage payment calculator shows a monthly payment equal to one third of your after-tax income.

Whether you use an online mortgage payment calculator or not, it is very important that you don't overextend yourself by borrowing more than you can afford.

More information at Emergency Refinancing, including today's mortgage rates, mortgage rates predictions, and a free mortgage payment calculator.

Image: David D Muir

Investing In Corporate Bonds

In a life filled with risk, it pays to play it safe sometimes - as the smart ones have learned when investing in corporate bonds.

What are corporate bonds? They are the money raised by corporations over and above the sales, services, loans from banks and stocks. In essence, a bond is a loan by the investor to the company. Unfortunately, not too many investors have taken the time and the effort to understand this instrument.

A bond is a loan to a company and like loans, there is a date when the loan has to be paid back and a rate of interest that has to be paid on that loan in the meantime. Bonds are usually with companies for 10 years, after which they reach their maturity date.

While they are relatively safe, bonds too have certain risk factors, which can be broadly classified under the terms Credit Risk, Interest Risk and Maturity Risk.

Credit Risk refers to the chance that the company may default on the loan. Interest Risk refers to the chance that interest rates may move against you during the term of the bond.

Maturity Risk - there are some bonds that can be redeemed before they mature. These are referred to as ‘callable'. The corporation can pay for the bond you hold with cash, or issue new bonds against it, or maybe even a take out a bank loan. This means that if you have been used to getting a high rate of interest, this might suddenly stop if the company redeems the bond.

Let's now look at the advantages. If you are cautious and invest in high yield bonds that are healthy and not junk bonds, you can stand to gain a lot. You also have convertible bonds - you can buy bonds that convert into stock directly from the company rather than from the market. This means you can take advantage of the company's price appreciation while enjoying the safety factor of a bond. The price of the bond usually does not fall below a decent price return.

Like any other financial investment, you need to make informed choices and for investing in corporate bonds, you need to be well up on what is happening in the market. The great thing about investing in corporate bonds is that the benefits as well as the risks are transparent and easily gauged.

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High Mileage Auto Refinancing

Have you searched "high mileage auto refinancing" on Google lately?

Google supposedly returns the most useful results for "high mileage auto refinancing", but my observation is that if you really do need high mileage auto refinancing, there is not a lot of joy in the search results that come up under "high mileage auto refinancing".

Most of the first page of results for "high mileage auto refinancing" will take you directly to sign-up pages for online quotes. This is all well and good, except that none of them actually offer high mileage auto refinancing! Every single one of them lists restrictions on the age and/or mileage of the vehicle. They don't actually offer high mileage auto refinancing at all!

If your vehicle is pre-1997 and has travelled more than 80,000 miles, you may as well forget standard auto refinancing. These lenders advertise themselves under "high mileage auto refinancing", but anyone who thinks 80,000 miles is "high" needs to get out in their auto more often! Your standard auto finance company is just not interested in high mileage auto financing.

In fact, these businesses prey on the people who need high mileage auto refinancing.

Just about every other entry in the search results for "high mileage auto refinancing" is someone who is basically saying "Don't buy that high mileage auto - we will finance you into a newer one ..."

In other words, buy the auto we think you should buy, because that is the kind of auto we like to finance. I mean, where do these people get off?

If you have chosen to buy a high mileage auto, that is your choice, and if you need to finance the purchase, then no amount of wishing will magically make the vehicle younger or less well-travelled! You will need high mileage auto finance from somewhere.

If you have an older vehicle, or one with higher mileage, you have it for good reason, and if you need to refinance it, there is no getting away from that situation. Somehow, you need to get access to high mileage auto refinancing.

I won't try to snow you - high mileage auto refinancing is tricky.

However, there are a number of options for high mileage auto refinancing - just go to the one site in the top Google search results that isn't trying to scam seekers of high mileage auto refinancing - EmergencyRefinancing.com - and you might just see the light at the end of the tunnel ... lateral thinking is the way to go.

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!

Refinancing? Don't become shark bait.

Refinancing has many benefits. If interest rates have fallen, or if you have significantly reduced your balance owing, then refinancing can result in a lower monthly mortgage payment. You can also use refinancing to release the equity in your property in the form of cash or a home equity line of credit.

However, like all financial transations, or indeed any commercial dealings, refinancing is a case of caveat emptor - buyer beware. The benefits of refinancing can be wiped out if you don't read the fine print and understand exactly what is happening with your new mortgage.

First, check that your current mortgage doesn't have any exit or early payment penalties. Sometimes, these fees can completely outweigh the benefits you might otherwise get from refinancing.

Of course, some would say you should have read the fine print last time and chosen a mortgage with no early payment penalties, but there is no use in crying over spilt milk. If you find there are nasty surprises in your current mortgage terms and conditions, just crunch the numbers and decide whetehr it is still worth going ahead with the refinancing.

Even if there is very little financial advantage in refinancing, there is still a benefit in going ahead. Your new mortgage won't have such penalties, because you now know to look for them. It may be worth refinancing for very little financial gain, or even at a slight cost, just to get out of that draconian mortgage you unknowingly signed for in the past.

Watch for hidden costs. These are incredibly common. Application fees, valuation fees, broker commissions, inspection fees, title transfer fees, legal fees, stamp duties, registration fees, account closing fees, account opening fees, mortgage discharge fees, administration charges, copying charges, even costs for making telephone calls! Make sure you hve a complete list of all the costs before you begin the process, so there are no surprises.

Read and understand the terms of your mortgage. The standard mortgage has fixed monthly payments for thirty years, but don't assume you are being offered a standard mortgage. Read it and find out exactly what the terms are.

Adjustible or variable mortgage rates mean that your interest rate will go up and down over time. Since interest rates are at hisotically low levels just now, this can only be bad for you, and you definitely want a fixed rate.

Some lenders have made the payments seem lower by not requiring the borrower to pay all of each monthly payment. The catch is that what you don't pay gets added to the balance on your mortgage. So instead of paying off your mortgage by a small amount each month, your mortgage is actually getting larger each month.

To make these mortgages even more frightening, after a few years, typically five years, you have to start paying the full monthly payment anyway. By then, the mortgage has often blown out to more than the house is worth, and the homeowner is trapped.

Make sure you are being offered a nice, normal, standard, fixed interest mortgage where the payments are the same every year for thirty years.

Refinancing is a great solution to a range of financial problems, and done correctly it can be a way to get ahead on the steps to financial freedom. Don't be bitten by the sharks - do your homework and be sure you are getting a good refinancing deal.

Read Suze Orman's 9 Steps To Financial Freedom at the Emergency Refinancing website.

Photos by miusam-ck and egarc2.