Mortgages make homes possible. Finding the right loan, making the best decision and getting the house you can afford are important to the BlueCollarDollarWe can give you the information you need to avoid the most common mistakes. Home Your Ad Could be Here Site Map Featured Personal Finance Title Paul Petillo provides you with practical, proven advice on finding the right places to invest, weighing risk versus return, anticipating pitfalls in the market, and maintaining a diversified portfolio. Investing for the Utterly Confusednow on sale! Paul's new book: Retirement Planning for the Utterly Confused With a special online bibliography! Larry Swedroe's new book is a complete and comprehensive guide for fixed income investors The title says it all! Contact Us All content is copyright (1998-2008) BonPaulProductions (all rights reserved)

Consumer Alert A new law entitles you to free credit report. But is it really free? You've been Stolen...A look at your credit safety Repairing Your Credit Six Habits of Good Credit Five Keys to Understanding Your Credit Score Four Steps to Repairing Credit Consumer Alert A new law entitles you to free credit report. But is it really free? The odds are stacked against a pristine credit report. How does yours stack up? Home Focus An increasing number of Americans are using their homes and the equity in them recklessly. What effect will this increased debt have on an economic downturn? The BlueCollarDollar examines the effects of spending the house. Lending to the risky borrower has become big business as the push to get everyone into a home has created the ability for some to achieve homeownership that otherwise would not have been so fortunate Is it possible to buy a house with No Money Down Who are these three and what is it that makes them so vital to your ability to buy a home? The story of Freddie and Fannie and Ginnie Home Costs Have you started looking, or even begun to dream. Here is a help guide through the loan process before you even apply. Loans, Step by Step How much is that house down on the corner? I do hope it's the one for me. Or something like that. The question really is, "Can I afford that house on the corner?" Here you might find an idea of just how much you can afford. Mortgages are the financial vehicle that allows you to purchase a home. Here's a little guide through the maze. Are you curious as to how much house you can afford? Or maybe you like to do a little mortgage math Perhaps you'd like to calculate the cost of buying down your current loan Do you know your credit score? The formula is still a mystery. What does this mean to you as a applicant? More than you think. More... Mortgages Updated for 2008 Mortgage Links of Interest How where you live affects your credit. "If they [Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] go away or are crippled because of the current panic among investors, home lending will suffer a catastrophic blow. That's the last thing the housing market needs right now. Steve Brown reports. If there is a silver lining in the otherwise dark cloud looming over the real estate market, it is that now is one of the best times in years to buy a home in almost 30 years. Rising defaults and foreclosures and an oversupply of homes are more likely to stunt a real estate recovery than tighter mortgage standards, lenders say. Feel like you are worth less? U.S. Household Net Worth Fell the Most in 5 Years Last Quarter By Carlos Torres June 5 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. household wealth fell in the first quarter by the most in more than five years and borrowing slowed as home values and stock prices plunged and lenders restricted credit, Federal Reserve figures showed. Need a new mortgage? Call Uncle Sam By Les Christie Lawmakers are set to continue to grapple with the best response to the rising tide of home foreclosures. Nothing Special With Treasuries as Fed Has Mortgages ( By Liz Capo McCormick The dollar isn't the only casualty of the Federal Reserve's rescue of seized-up credit markets. Bond traders are finding there is nothing special about  Treasuries anymore... Special to the BlueCollarDollar: Interview with John Trauth, author and architect of the Reverse Mortgage. Special Report:We crave transparency but once we have it we tend to no longer want it. We seek information, but once we get the news we react poorly. We look for some signs from a time past hoping that what once happened could possibly shed light on what is. But this time it is different. The Dichotomy of the US Economic Downturn Still calculating the value of your home in your retirement plan? Perhaps that is not such a good idea. Retirement Planning and Your Home's Net Worth Special Report: Return to Lender: The First of a Three Part Series on Mortgages. Searching with Credentials: The Second of a Three Part Series on Mortgages. Losing Proposition: The Third in a Three Part Series on Mortgages. Foreclosures estimates for 2007 are expected to reach 1.3 million. These additional homes add to the already higher than normal inventory of available houses driving prices down. It is important to remember that each 1% increase in housing prices keeps 70-80,000 foreclosures from occurring. With inventories of unsold homes rising, the nationwide average home price is expected to fall 5%. Sub-prime borrowers need more protection from lenders. Who should do it? The states are trying. The federal government is balking and Elliot Spitzer has made another motion to object to their roadblock between what is right and the The national banking system. As Americans face the growing problem of entitlement reductions, poor or diluted pension payouts, corporate bankruptcies, or just insufficient funds to meet day-to-day expenses, reverse mortgages will become the new nest egg for a good deal of the currently retired, or those who are planning to in the near future. Are they right for you or your elderly parents? The housing market is about to change. Not only have interest rate risen dramatically from their historic lows, $600 billion of sub-prime loans are about to change their terms. A look at how the American Dream is about to change. Danergous Curves Ahead! Will this affect the housing market? By offering the 30 year long bond again, the Treasury hopes to show the global economy that we will be around for at least that long and of course, able to repay the debt. The hope is that the yield on these notes will be attractive enough to switch investors into the longer obligations. Now fast forward to 2005, a time that has seen historically low interest rates designed to stimulate the economy, a long period of housing growth and a significant shift away from renting to owning. Is the misunderstood REIT the place for you? Nine Signs of a Bubble No amount of coverage has stopped folks who intend to purchase their first home from jumping in blindly, using ever riskier means to finance what has become a very expensive undertaking. One of the benefits of homeownership, and admittedly the draw for many heavily taxed individuals and couples for the last fifty years, may have gotten better - and you may not be aware. Your home and taxes Changes in the way insurers look at homes could have devastating results for homeowners and those looking to by a home. Not only is your insurance history coming under scrutiny, but the health of your home can be questioned as well. Do you have a CLUE what I am speaking about? You should. In this special report on insurance for your home, we look at a growing problem that provides insurers with a way of controlling costs while providing huge hurdles for consumers. Chapter 7 allows for a fresh start. A new law passed by Congress and signed by the President holds spendthrifts who abuse the system accountable for their debts. Women and finance - Women have made great strides in not only earning better wages - although they still fall 24 cents an hour behind a man with a similar job - and have become considerably more financially savvy than just five years ago, many still facing an uncertain financial future. Here are some ideas on how to fix what might soon become an enormous financial burden on the so-called growing American economy. Order your copy of Building Wealth in a Paycheck-to-Paycheck World by Paul Petillo. This books contains a complete and comprehensive guide to home ownership as well as Straight talk on mutual funds, bonds, real estate, and annuities Techniques for avoiding financial disasters Tools to help readers track their debt and create a plan for staying out of it Road maps to buying a home and saving for college and retirement Reshaping the Mortgage Markets So much has been speculated about the predicted rise in short term interest rates and their long term effect on the housing market, it is difficult to make sense of what is really happening. Mortgage Law Nolo.com Law Center Just a plain old good site to bookmark. Follow through "buying a house", then to "house hunting online" and you'll find a cool checklist and a newsletter complete with forms for buying your home without the use of a lawyer. A number of readers have written in asking what the difference between real estate and the stock market is when compared as an investment. With interest rates remaining low, the questions do merit some thought. But there are a few thing to consider when comparing the two. Many of you have refinanced your home mortgage if you were lucky enough to reside in a neighborhood whose values have increased substantially or you have tapped some of that equity you have been building. With any luck, you have taken that money and wisely returned it to your home. So just how much is that remodel going to cost? . The BlueCollarDollar takes a look. From an investment standpoint, the answer would appear on the surface to be true. There is some stagnation in real estate stocks on an individual basis, but valued as a group in mutual funds, or REITs, there is still some very favorable returns to be had. It is important to note that the Net Asset Value (NAV) of these types of funds will not see an enormous amount of movement either way. The return comes from the dividends. With the S&P 500 index hitting just above the 20% mark for the year, the attraction to the average return in REITs (around 7%) can make one wonder why these are not a major holding in your portfolio. Most REIT managers are historically conservative shooters, aiming at returns in the 8-10% range. Shopping around will find you some better performers, but they suffer from the same problem other mutual funds have. When you are at the top, there may be little upside left. If you are unclear how a REIT works, you can find out here. If you are unsure of what REIT to purchase, indexing is a good way to go from a protective standpoint. Industry pros suggest that your portfolio only hold a small percentage (10% or less) of these funds, which from a diversification standpoint might be wise. It is still a more conservative play, and more profitable than equities at the moment. 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