Think that after a multimillion dollar lawsuit and settlement that the big banks would start playing by the rules and treating their customers right? If so, the bridge salesman convention would LOVE to have you drop by.

Get ready for the next mortgage scam by the banks.

Single Point of Contact Scam

One of the things that the big mortgage banks were supposed to do to help their customers and stop mortgage foreclosure fraud was provide a single point of contact for borrowers to deal with on issues like mortgage modification, refinance or foreclosure avoidance. Before, borrowers were forced to call some 1-800 number where a faceless phone drone would do the standard dance. The borrower provided all of his or her information, and then the person on the phone would tell them what they needed to do.

Unfortunately, customers found that they had to start over every time they called. One mortgage modification specialist would say that they needed certain documents, then another one would say that they needed additional, or different documents, until finally, one day, a foreclosure notice showed up in the mail because the borrower had “failed” to comply with the necessary procedures.

By having a single point of contact, borrowers were supposed to be able to avoid this mess and lenders were supposed to be prevented from taking advantage of it by constantly changing the rules. However, the big lenders have found a way around this rule by, naturally, obeying the letter but not the spirit of the law.

How Banks Still Don’t Provide a Single Point of Contact

It turns out that getting around the requirement to provide a single contact for borrowers is all too easy.

First, the lender sends out a notice. That notice provides a name of a bank employee who will be the single point of contact for that borrower all through the mortgage modification process. This letter complies nicely with the law.

The scam starts when the borrower actually tries to contact this person. A single employee, of course, only works certain hours each day. If those hours happen to be 7:00 to 3:00 Eastern time and the borrower is on the West Coast where that is 4:00 A.M. to 12:00 noon, well that’s too bad. Not that it matters, because the so-called point of contact will never answer their phone anyway.

Many borrowers report that they can’t even leave a message because their contact’s voice mail box is always full. Those who can leave messages report that they are never called back, no matter when they leave a message or how many times they call.

The only answer?

Press to be transferred to another representative who will “try to help” and once again, mortgage customers are playing phone roulette with the banks and their representatives about what documents they have to provide, and to whom, and by when, and so on.

If you get stuck in this situation, documentation is your friend. Keep a journal of each and every call you make, including the time and date, who you make it to, and whether or not you leave a message. Be sure to leave a message with every call. Assuming your point of contact is a real person (maybe) and that he or she has not been instructed to not deal with you (maybe), then being an aggressive squeaky wheel might just get you the actual contact you need. When you do transfer to another representative make sure you tell them that you have called your contact many times and never gotten a return call. Those calls are recorded, and your constant communication that your single point of contact is not doing what they are supposed to be doing may eventually be helpful to your case whether in a foreclosure hearing or other legal process.

Do your best to follow the process and get your loan fixed, but if it gets too far out of hand, report the lender to your state’s Attorney General, and to consumer groups. You may even reach out to a reporter. Remind them of the settlement and the requirement that there be a single point of contact and then offer them your meticulous records detailing how your lender isn’t following through.

In the end, pay when you can, and keep all of your options open and hopefully, you’ll come out of the situation O.K.

Related posts:

1. Government Mortgage Help Programs Scams and Deceptive Marketing and Mailings
2. Good Enough Checking From Your Bank or Brokerage

Bank Mortgage Scams Continue originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Figuring out what the best thing to do with your money is can be difficult. Many people get caught up in all of the possibilities. They wonder is it wise to pay off your house mortgage? Should they pay off credit cards or put higher down payment on a new home? Should I pay off my car loan with home equity loan? Is it better to pay off your house or keep the money? And, most of all, should I pay my house off at retirement.

We have discussed if it is smart to pay off your home early before.

Unless paying off your home still leaves you with a sizable amount of cashable assets, the answer usually is not what you think. For people without substantial assets remaining after paying off the mortgage, owning your house free and clear does nothing but trap a lot of money where you can’t get it, inside your house. Financial professionals call the equity in your home that you are not going to sell “dead equity.”

Here is what to do with your assets before you pay off your mortgage, and also, a quick look at understanding the pros and cons of a reverse mortgage.

Reverse Mortgage Mythology

The first thing out of many people’s mouth when they come to see me with a ton of equity and no retirement savings is “reverse mortgage.” Sometime in the next decade you’ll see a major government campaign to clear up the misconceptions around reverse mortgages as more and more baby boomers find themselves unable to support themselves because they were counting on a reverse mortgage.

For a sobering reality check visit the AARP Reverse Mortgage Calculator (Stay off of other reverse mortgage web sites. This subject is an area full of scams and con-artists. Searching for “reverse mortgage” is a recipe for disaster.)

The guys in our example above can get between $150,000 and $200,000 in a reverse mortgage if the owners are 75. Want one at 65? As low as $65,000. Keep in mind that once you take a reverse mortgage, you are no longer the owner of the home for borrowing purposes, so you CANNOT get a home equity loan of any kind after you get a reverse mortgage. How long do you think $65,000 will last in retirement?

What To Do?

Obviously since this is an article on the psychology of money, I am well aware that you might want to pay off your mortgage anyway. If so, here is the smart way to go about it.

1. Cash Reserve – If you don’t have 6 months worth of expenses in a non-retirement account (not a 401(k) or IRA) then save money into a money market account first. Only after you have six months worth of savings should you consider paying off your mortgage.
2. Worse Loans – If you have ANY OTHER kind of loan you are better off paying it off first. Most important is to pay off all credit card debt. That’s right, all. Every cent. If you have any credit card debt you are an idiot for sending extra money to your mortgage. I can’t be any plainer than that. Be sure to maximize the credit cards you do have by taking advantage of credit card reward programs like the Capital One rewards and Citibank rewards. Also, pay off student loans and car loans first. Don’t bother paying off a car lease. With most leases you pay all the interest whether you pay it off early or not, so don’t bother.
3. Retirement – If you are not saving at least 10% of your salary into your 401(k), then do not send extra money to your mortgage. Instead, increase your contribution to your 401(k). You will need an account built up of many years worth of 10% savings in order to retire comfortably and PAY FOR YOUR HOUSE’s non-mortgage expenses. If you get a lump sum of money, then put it in a money market account, increase your 401(k) contribution and use withdrawals from the money market account to make up the shortfall in your paycheck. By the way, if you are over 50 and your 401(k) balance isn’t north of $300,000 then go 15% ASAP and don’t bother with the mortgage.
4. Major Expenses – Don’t be near sighted. Scan the horizon for major up-coming expenses. Want to know where to look? Try a glance at your kids first. How many years until college? Are you where you want to be for helping them out? If Annie is 16 years old and you have an extra $20,000 do you think the smart move is to pay $20,000 on your mortgage today and then get a $20,000 home equity loan in 2 years? (The answer is no.)
5. Does Another Option Sound Safe Too? – Many people who pay off their mortgage do so because it sounds “safe”. Ask yourself if anything else would make you feel just as safe. For example, if you had a $200,000 mortgage and $100,000 in U.S. Savings Bonds would that make you feel safe? (Savings Bonds are garbage by the way, it was just an example.)
6. Feel O.K. About Paying in Chunks? – Most people pay off their mortgage early by sending extra money in with their payments. I myself round up to the next $100 just because it makes me feel good and it doesn’t have any overall impact. But, if you are sending an extra $500 or $1,000 a month consider the “Big Extra Payment” strategy. Instead of sending an extra $1,000 to the mortgage company, put it in a money market account. Wait 15 or 20 months. Now, if you still want to pay early on your mortgage you can send in $15,000 or $20,000 all at once. The interest you pay in the meantime will be equalized by the amount you earned on the savings. This way, if something happens, say in month 13, you’ll have $13,000 that you can replace the roof with (or whatever) instead of scrambling to come up with the dough.

Discipline Anyone?

Tons of people proudly tell me how they claim less withholdings on their W-4 than they have to because then they get a big refund when they do their taxes. You’ve heard all about how this is a dumb strategy because it’s the same thing as giving the government and interest free loan. They do it anyway. Why?

For most people an extra $200 in their paycheck is something they just spend without ever noticing. But, $2,400 all at once is something that they would do something smart with. For these people, the “forced savings” plan of low-balling your W-4 withholdings is the only way they’ll ever save money. I suppose it is better than nothing.

A similar kind of person likes the idea of paying off their mortgage early for the same reason. The theory is that if they saved $500 a month, then eventually they would notice $5,000 in the bank and they would blow it on a vacation or a car. Instead, if they send $500 a month to the mortgage company then they won’t have that extra money so they won’t spend it.

You know yourself better than anyone else and if this describes you then by all means, do what works for you. I’m the first one to say that financial planning is about more than the math. It’s about what will actually work. So, send the extra money to your mortgage company, but do yourself a favor and see if you can’t work on building the financial savvy and discipline that would help you in the long run. Maybe send $400 to the mortgage company and save $100. Put the $100 someplace it’s harder to get to like at a bank a four-hour drive away. Don’t setup online access and cut up the ATM card the second you get it. Then, that $100 will build up and you won’t be able to spend it on a whim. With the extra time to think about it, you might just find that you have the discipline after all.

Good Luck

If you do manage to pay off your house, congratulations. It is a noble goal and I am not speaking against it. In fact, the best retirement planning I do is for people with their house paid off. But, it has to be that they have their house paid off AND they have significant savings. Planning for someone with no mortgage and $700,000 is a joy. Trying to squeeze a budget out of $250,000 even with no mortgage is an exercise in bargain shopping and cutting down to the bare necessities.

Just understand that there are many factors to be taken into consideration. Once you have looked at all the factors, then pay the darn thing off. I’ll be the first to shake your hand.

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Should I Pay Off My Mortgage Instead of Investing originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

I’ve been a professional writer and business consultant for over a year now, but many people still remember me from my financial advisor days.  So, I get plenty of questions about investing, the stock market, and real estate.  The number one question I get these days, is, “Should I be buying real estate now?”

The answer?

Yes, if you need a new house.

Real Estate Investment Cycles are Long

The funny part about all of this to someone who has been “on the inside” is that these are the very same people who refused to have anything to do with the stock market following the Internet bubble of the late 1990s.  While I patiently tried to explain to them that buying low and selling high meant buying now, when things looked at their worst, they shook their heads and said they were going to do something else. 

The same thing about the stock market holds for all investing.  Buying low and then selling at a higher price is how you make money.  But, here is the thing everyone seems to have forgotten, or maybe they just never knew.  Real estate market cycles take much longer than stock and bond investment cycles. In other words, the time from bottom to top (and vice versa) is much shorter in the stock market than it is in the real estate market.

This is not true, but for example, if today was the bottom of real estate prices and the bottom of stock market prices, and if both markets are headed for 25% gains, the stock market will be up 25% way before the real estate market will be up 25%.

How do I know?

History. Facts. Reality. – Take your pick.

Real Estate Bubble – Stock Market Bubble

There is a reason people keep calling the real estate market of the last few years the real estate bubble.  Just like the stock market bubble of a few years prior, it was an unsustainable, and phony rise in real estate prices.  Prices were driven up by a variety of factors, all of which led to increases that were too quick and not supported by the fundamentals.  Just like in the stock market bubble.  If you are intelligent, you don’t count on 50+% up years for the stock market any more.  Similarly, if you are intelligent, you don’t count on 20+% up years in the real estate market any more either.

What can you expect from the real estate market?

When the price increases do come, numbers like 5% are much more common in real estate than numbers like 10%.  A little math is in order.

If you buy a $200,000 with 5% down (good luck getting an investment loan like this anymore) that means you will pay $10,000 out of pocket.  We’ll ignore closing costs, but they could be a thousand dollars or so.  If your real estate goes up 5% starting next year and keeps going each year thereafter(unlikely) then, it will be worth $210,000 at the end of 2009, $220,500 at the end of 2010, and $231,525 at the end of 2011.  That is a $31,525 profit in raw numbers.

Now, real estate cheerleaders will point you toward the math of $31,525 from a $10,000 investment is around a 100% per year return.  Of course, the devil is always in the details.

Your monthly payment on that $190,000 mortgage at 6.0% for those 36 months is $1,139 for a total of $41,004.  Some of that pays down the mortgage, but thanks to the way amortization works, those first few years are mostly interest.  At the end of year three, you will still owe around.$182,500.

So, the real math is $10,000 investment (down payment) + $41,000 in payments = $51,000 total investment.

$182,500 remaining mortgage value sold at $231,525 = $49,000 profit.

OOPS! 

And we haven’t even included property taxes yet. 

Right about now, someone will mention the mortgage deduction, and yes, there is some value there.  Rough math suggests that if you are in the 30% tax bracket then you would have saved around $10,000 in taxes if you deducted the mortgage.  Of course, if we are going to get detailed, there is also possible capital gains taxes, maintenance, upkeep, repairs, real estate commissions and so on.

The next argument involves renting the house to pay the mortgage.  The counter argument is that there are costs to renting a property, it might sit empty for some number of months, and the taxes all change when you rent a property.  (You can’t claim a home as your primary residence if you are renting it out.)  Again, there are a million ways to slice this, but no matter how you do, this is not a no-brainer.  And, no matter how you slice it, the same arguments being made now for real estate are the arguments made for stocks. 

Keep in mind that I am not your stock broker or your real estate agent, so I don’t get anything out of it either way.  Just don’t give in to the feeble minded tricks that social conditioning creates.  If real estate is a good investment at the bottom, then so are stocks.  If you are too afraid to invest in stocks right now, why aren’t you too afraid to invest in real estate?  Answer those questions honestly and completely and you will be in a much better position to think rationally about your money and investing, both now and in the future.

The point still remains the same.  Yes, a LONG-TERM investment in real estate might make sense now.  Of course, so would a LONG-TERM investment in stocks.  Just THINK first, and remember that you are not sitting on a “sure thing” idea.

Related posts:

1. Buy Real Estate?
2. Get Rich Not So Quick in Real Estate

Buy Real Estate Now – Or Maybe Not originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

I’ve written recently about our attempt to sell our home without a realtor using Iggyshouse.com.  We used them because we got a free MLS listing and a place to upload a ton of description and pictures.  Their site was down for a disturbingly long time in June and part of July but is back up for now.  The only reason I’m not blasting them is that our MLS listing stayed up the whole time.  Still, proceed with caution.

There was some confusion about the MLS listings caused mostly by the way MLS operates.  As a member of the general public, you can search MLS to your heart’s content, but you cannot directly contact the sellers.  MLS does not list the contact information on any publicly available view of MLS, only on the version that you have to pay for.  This is how MLS maintains its monopoly position and forces people to use realtors.  In fact, one of the warnings from Iggyshouse is that it is against MLS rules to use pictures that have any contact info on them (because then you wouldn’t need a paying subscriber to get a phone number).  So, your picture can’t have your phone number at the top.  It can’t even show the sign in front of your house if there is a name or number on it.

Part of MLS’s settlement with regulators was to open up some but not all of their information and this is one of the areas where MLS won.  So, if you know a realtor you can have them look at the professional’s view that they get and that will have your contact information. 

List on More Than Just MLS

This is why you have to post on some other sites if you want to get buyers who don’t have a realtor.  Craigslist is popular for this, but if you do use it, make sure and put a watermark on your pictures with the address, the sale price, the words “for sale”, and your phone number.  Keep it simple.  Just something like:

3273 Main St – For Sale – $450,000 – 555-555-2395

Scammers like to take the photos and descriptions from legitimate for sale ads and turn them into bogus for rent ads to trick people out of their money.  The watermark should keep them from bothering, or keep people from falling for it.

Also, update your information on Zillow, and on any other free real estate sites you can find.  I’m experimenting with a site called Postlets which supposedly pushes out what you put on their site to multiple real estate sites.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

Good luck.

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Free MLS Listings No Realtor originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Ok, I’ve stopped daily updates about selling our own home. Truth is, there just isn’t that much action in real estate to justify daily postings. However, today we have 3 showings scheduled, so that is very good news. We haven’t got much in the way of feedback. One of the downsides about selling your home without a realtor is that other real estate agents won’t talk to you in the same way. It isnt’ anything against people selling their homes themselves, it is just that they can’t be sure that the homeowner understands the code that goes along with giving feedback and might use something that is said later in a way that another realtor wouldn’t. So, we put out sheets to solicit feedback. That way either the client or the realtor can jot something down if they feel so inclined.

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Sell Your Own Home – Update originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

As you may have noticed, we are getting ready to sell our house.  After living in our first house for about 7 years, we’ve been in our last two for 2 and 3 years respectively.

The interesting thing is that each time we have made a lot of money.  The past two times we’ve used this new wealth to buy more expensive houses.  This time, we’ll be trading down, but we will also be paying off every dollar of debt we have other than the new mortgage.  This isn’t insignificant when you consider that we are in our early thirties and both had to go to college on the back of student loans (including the wife’s three years in law school.)

Looking back, I’ve noticed a parallel to the stock market.  In the stock market, there are day traders.  You probably remember more than one or two friends who tried this way to easy wealth in the late 90s.  Only, it turns out it isn’t so easy, and ironically, that most of the people who thought they were day traders really weren’t.

A day trader buy and sells positions within the same day.  The entire concept is based upon taking advantage of quick moves in stock prices, so the very thought of holding a position overnight, let alone for several days or even weeks is not what day trading is about.  However, one can make good profits by trading in this longer range particularly when the market overreacts to events.

Likewise, there is a method for making money in real estate call Fix and Flip.  With a Fix and Flip someone buys a house and then fixes it up and then sells it immediately for a profit.  There is a lot more to it than that, and as they say, the devil is in the details, but the concept is similar to day trading stocks.  What we have done can be considered more along the lines of trading over days or weeks in the stock market.

If you still think that every time you sell your home you have to roll all of your money into a new home, or another kind of real estate, you’ve fallen behind the tax times.  These days, the first $250,000 (if single) or $500,000 (married) of capital gains in your home is tax free, no matter what you do with the money.  The catch is that it must be your primary residence, and you can only do it every 2 years.  Although it was never our intention, this is what we have done the last two times.  Each time we bought a house that wasn’t at it’s full potential.  When we bought our current house we paid the lowest price per square foot in the area.  This was a bit of an ego blow to our real estate agent who bought a home in the same area a couple of months before and said her goal was to pay the lowest price per square foot in the area, which she did, but we paid even less when we bought our house.

The reason we were able to do so is that the house is an older bungalow house.  Although it had been updated some, the last time was probably back in the 1980s.  Wallpaper everywhere, and not the subtle kind either.  One room had wallpaper that literally had white fibers “peeling” from the wall.  I assume this was someone’s idea of adding texture, but it was clearly out of fashion when we looked at the house.  The not so popular wallpaper, plus a pink kitchen, and tons of clutter kept people from seeing the house’s potential.  When we bought it another realtor remarked to our realtor “You finally found someone who could see the upside.”

We spent the first two weeks we owned the house stripping wallpaper and painting.  The next year we remodeled the kitchen.  It’s now a nice blue color and we took out a half wall that made a breakfast nook, but also made a tiny kitchen.  People interested in the house now are looking at a nice big kitchen with plenty of counter space and granite counter tops.  More importantly we remodeled the bathroom which was the only room in the house to have never been redone.  When we met the previous owners at the closing the woman remarked that they always meant to do it, but they didn’t want the inconvenience (the other bathroom is in the basement.)  Our reward for two months of construction is a shining gem of a house, and a pretty tidy profit when we sell.

Our previous house went down in a similar way.

How to Slow Fix and Flip

Real estate can be a great wealth building tool.  Usually this comes from the leverage provided by mortgages.   Of course, this is also it’s biggest risk.  Going the Slow Fix and Flip route though mitigates this risk and still offers big rewards.  Here is how.

First, you have to live somewhere and you are going to pay for it anyway.  By living in your investment you are splitting the expense of the house payment between investment and cost of living.  Basically, killing two birds with one stone.

Second, by living in the house, you get get to see all of the potential.  While a quick stroll might reveal that new kitchen cabinets would be nice, a few months in a home might open other possibilities.  As you try and figure out where to put your cappuccino maker, you might notice a way to extend the counter by removing a not very useful closet, or notice that the sun is really great in the summer and would be even better if you could get a skylight, and so on.

Third, eliminating the ticking clock.  When you buy a property to fix and flip, the clock on your profit starts ticking.  Everyday that passes before you sell the house eats into to your profit.  When you live in the house that clock goes away.  Who cares if it takes you an extra month to get the new landscaping in.  You aren’t going anywhere for a while.

Fourth, tax free profits.  If you live in the house as your primary home for two years, then you can take all the profits (up to $500,000) tax free.  With a regular fix and flip you’ll have to pay taxes or jump through some pretty tight hoops to get the money into your next investment.

Finally, you might accidentally end up owning your dream home.  Frankly, we love our home and the only reason we are looking to move is that we both want to make the jump out of the corporate ship.  A smaller mortgage and no debt will make that easier.  So, when you look for your next home, or if you think there is the possibility of selling in the future, start looking for things that you could fix or update while you live there.  You just might reap some nice profits down the road.

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Get Rich Not So Quick in Real Estate originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

You have to be kidding! My cell phone, which is the number we have put on all of our real estate marketing, was off yesterday all afternoon. I checked it this morning just to be sure and we have 2 showing requests on there from Friday. So, we scrambled to clean up and call the right people back. Both showings got scheduled and held so, Yea! Also, another call this morning for one more showing, so that is 3 for Saturday. That is perfectly respectable. The really good news is that the showings we’ve had so far represent a pretty good cross section of the local Realtors who “specialize” in our area which means that the people in the know are brining their clients here. So, we aren’t way overpriced or anything it would seem.

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Sell Your Own Home – Day 14 originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

So, it’s Friday and no calls for showings yet this weekend.  This is bad news as far as I can see.  Apparently after an initial burst of interest, it has dried up.  It is still early April and we planned to have our house on the market for a while, but I’d still like to have at least one showing lined up just to let me know the interest is still there.  Last weekend, I got several calls on Saturday to do Saturday showings but I figured that was because we were new to MLS that weekend.  We’ll see what happens from here.

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1. Sell Your Own Home – Day 14
2. Sell Your Own Home – Day 6

Sell Your Own Home – Day 13 originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

By any measure, the math says that paying off your home is not a smart move financially. Then why is it that so many people see paying off their home as a great goal?

There are three reasons really. One is out of date thinking, the other is a financial myopia, the last one is No Discipline Syndrome.

Out of Date

Out of date thinking, or as I like to call it “Old Timey Wisdom” (like in Oh Brother Where Are’t Thou – Old Timey Music). Old Timey Wisdom is wisdom that was once true in different times but may not hold up today.

Just one generation ago, paying off your house meant financial security. Often, this was a major deal to this generation, because one generation before a lot of people lost their homes at various times, but most notably during the Great Depression. The wisdom became that as long as your house was paid off, you never had to worry about a huge part of your financial security.

So what is different today than just a few decades ago? Well, then, it was likely that the first house you bought could be the one you lived in your whole life. Of course, there was the concept of a “starter home” which was a cheaper house that you bought first with the idea that you would trade up to your “real” house later after on in life. Even then, it was very likely that you would pay off your house not by doing anything clever, but by simply living there for 30 years until the mortgage ran out.

How likely does that sound today? Between transfers and promotions, layoffs, new opportunities, moving for better schools and so on, the average person will own something like five to seven homes. Do the math. If live in 7 different houses each for just 3 years, that means you will live in six non-permanent houses and it will take you 18 years to do that. If you buy your first house at age 21 then you won’t buy your final house until you are 39 years old. Pay off a 30 year mortgage and you’re 69 years old. That’s great, but it isn’t quite the same as your parents or grandparents might have done.

The other HUGE difference is pensions. Just a generation ago, it was common to work for the same employer for thirty years. At the end of that career you got a pension.

A house isn’t free even if you own it free and clear. There are property taxes, maintenance, insurance, and heating and cooling. With a pension, you had a way to take care of some of these expenses. Without a pension, you have to have some other money to take care of these ongoing expenses. Don’t forget you have to live on that money too. As a professional financial planner I saw a lot of people who didn’t count on that fact and now  they don’t know what to do.

Financial Myopia

With financial myopia you can see something great, but you have a hard time seeing other things. In this case, you can see very well that ever month your biggest expense is your mortgage payment. You think that if only you didn’t have that mortgage payment, then things would be different. If I had a nickel for every time I heard this line of thought, I’d have my house paid off!

While paying off your house isn’t a bad thing, it is important to look around and see the whole financial picture before you make any moves in this area.

Savings First

First, do you have sufficient savings. Once you send the money into your mortgage company it is gone. You can’t get it back. No matter how much you owe or don’t owe on your house, First National Mortgage isn’t going to mail you a check for $10,000 when your water heater blows out and leaks all over your basement the same week your car starts making a funny sound. That money is what we call “dead equity.” Yes, it is your money, and yes, it helps your net worth, but it can’t be moved to take care of other needs. It is dead to you. I know what you are thinking. You can get a home equity loan.

The home equity loan rescue plan has trapped more people than I can count. For starters keep in mind that no matter how much equity you have in your house a home equity loan or a HELOC are still loans. That means you are going to have to qualify for the loan. That means you are going to have to have a job (or other income) that pays the right amount for the payment. Too many people lose their jobs, eat up their savings, and then go into the bank looking for a home equity loan. Sorry. They don’t give loans to people that don’t have a way to pay them back. It takes a lot of work to foreclose on your house and sell it to get their money back. They want to make sure that it isn’t likely they’ll have to do it.

Do yourself a favor and make sure you have built up a sufficient cash reserve BEFORE you start sending extra money to your mortgage.

Retirement?

Remember the whole no-pension thing? Without a pension you have to count on yourself for your retirement income. Here is what I see every day that people have forgot to think about.

If you have a $400,000 mortgage and $400,000 in the bank, you can continue to make your mortgage payments. You can also eat, pay the light bill, and occasionally buy something for yourself.

If you have a $0 mortgage (house completely paid off) and $0 in the bank, you don’t have to make a mortgage payment. Good thing because you don’t have any money. Oh, you also can’t eat, pay the light bill, or buy anything for yourself. Even worse, at least once a year you are going to owe some property taxes. I guess you’ll be selling off your furnishings in order to stay in your house. Again, if you are thinking home equity line here, you are busted. Unless you get it before you retire, no one is going to set one up for you. Even if you do get one are you really getting anywhere? Is it any different to owe $400,000 on a equity loan than to owe $400,000 on the mortgage.

What to do before you pay off mortgage isn’t easy to figure out, but here are some good personal finance tips to start with.

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Paying Off Your House Mortgages and Money Psychology originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com

Middle of the week. Three total showings. Nothing new to report from the selling your own home without a realtor battlefront.

Related posts:

1. Sell Home Yourself
2. Sell Your Own Home – Day 6

Sell Your Own Home – Day 10 to 12 originally published at Personal Finance Blog - FinanceGourmet.com