Tips on home purchases

I am in the market right now for buying a new home and have had many different programs for loand and financing thrown my way. How do you know what will be best for your future? Well, I believe there are different ways of optimizing your dollar for different circumstances. I am going to focus on my current situation and explain what is best for me. I am a student with a minimal income of around 3 thousand dollars a month. Not much savings either. Meaning not more than 10,000 dollars. So after hearing of how great a rate you can get by putting down as much money as possible. To just about anybody, the low rate sounds woderful, especially when it is a fixed one. However, becasue we do not plan on being in the home for more than 5 years, it really doesnt make much sense to tie up all of our cash in this home just for a lower rate that wont be used for more than 5 years of the 30. So with that in mind I said that it is probably better to pay the extra hundred to 200 dollars a month for 6 months after purchasing the home, and thenrefinance after six months and then receive your lower interest rate without having to use all of your precious savings. And for newlyweds in college, we all know that savings is a literal lifeline. And looking at the flip side of this coin...If we were well into out middle age years and had a healthy savings and predictable income every month, and were looking to buy a home that we would plan on spending a significant amount of time in, then I think it would be best to go ahead an dput a large sum of cash down on a home to go ahead and lock in that low rate for the remainder of a mortgage. So to sum up my thoughts and plan of attack; When buying a home and plan on maximiaing your dollar on the home, use as little cash as possible to get into the home. because chances are it will be a very long time before you see it again!

Better to Give Than Recieve

Just a quick plug for today. The principle of giving if you want to recieve is something that all of us should incorporate into all of our financial decisions. Matter of fact, my Accounting instructor mentioned this to our class right around the same time the class started and it has kind of stuck with me. I dont think it should matter wether you are religious or not, but I do feel that if you give 10% of your income even if you do not see anything monetary directly in return, I feel very strongly that just the practice of giving a percentage a month will create a discipline that cant be broken. Think of it as creating a habit. We all know how hard it is to break a habit. So making this a habit will also create the habit of saving a percentage per paycheck. So lets figure that becasue it takes 21 days continously of repitition to create a habit, (most people agree), we will save our paychecks for 21 consecutive weeks and 'voila' you have created a habit that will sustain you through just about any financial roller coaster that you might encounter for the rest of your life. Sounds good doesnt it! I feel that the stability of many families throughout the world could be saved simply by generating this practice of giving especially when they are just getting started. Because we all know that when you dont give when you have little, you wont give when you have lots!!!!!