Refi Fever

They announced the mortgage limits for our county the other day. For King, Pierce & Snohomish County, the new limits for conventional & FHA mortages is $567,500. Looks like our housing market will get a nice shot in the arm. While it hasn't fallen like many other areas across the country, it certainly has slowed. So I'm gearing up to get the paperwork done.

I was chatting with a mortgage broker the other day and she indicated that lenders might tighten their credit requirements along with the limit increases, which isn't entirely unexpected.

Luckily, I signed up the other day for a monitoring service called True Credit . It costs 14.95 per month to view your credit report and scores from the three bureaus. I don't plan to keep it long, I just wanted to monitor my progress as I prepare to refinance prior to Dec 31st when the loan limits are supposed to expire. So I have had a look at my credit scores. Suffice to say, I'm not doing bad at all. I've cracked 700 series for two of the bureaus and 695 in the other. My plan to pay down the debt should bring the scores up to the desired range.

Based on what the broker mentioned, she expected lenders to require a score in the 700-teens and above range. I've achieved that already for 2 bureaus, I just need to raise the other one, which I definitely think is doable without more effort than writing checks.

All of these efforts will have significant impact on my budget and lower my monthly outgo by approximately $550-650. Talk about having some cushion each payday...I've already squeezed many of of my expenses until they screamed, so I was able to create a pretty nice cushion each month, which is currently earmarked for debt payment. This additional amount will make the checkwriting easier and faster! I can't wait until the debt payments are done...Finally, the money will be able to work a little more productively for me.

Missing in Action

Sorry I've been pretty quiet lately. The problem is I'm fighting this cold that won't quit. It came back with a vengeance just when I thought it was getting better.

Anyway, I'm on this mission to lower my expenses. So far I'm doing pretty good. I've cut back my cable and phone bills as well as my credit card bill. I've replaced all of the lightbulbs in my house with the energy saver bulbs. We put a timer on the porch light to prevent it from staying on all night and day.

Installing insulation is also on the list of things to do soon to try to keep more of the heat in the house.
So one other step I plan on taking is refinancing my mortgage. I was putting that step off for awhile given all of the problems in the mortgage market. However, the recent rate cuts have me thinking about how much I might be able to save. I think that I may take it slow and see if the recent stimulus proposals will help sweeten the deal and make my decision to refi even easier.