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How Can I Pay My Mortgage with a Credit Card?

May 19, 2023 by Finance Gourmet

paying your mortgage with your credit card

Generally speaking, you cannot pay your mortgage with a credit card. Typically, you cannot pay for debt with debt. Of course, where there is a will there is a way. Here are four tricks to pay your mortgage with a credit card. Pay Your Mortgage With a Credit Card Cash Advance One of the good things about cash is that it is nobody’s business where you got your cash from. (Excluding, of course, money laundering, theft, and selling illegal goods.) Most credit cards offer easy cash advances. Many credit cards provide for a transfer from your cash advance credit line to a linked bank account. Some credit cards issue checks that you can write against your cash advance limit. Sometimes, but not always, you can get away with using a credit card check to pay a mortgage. However, banks and mortgage companies often electronically scan and validate checks before accepting them. It is likely that your mortgage company or bank will know you are using a credit card check to pay your monthly mortgage payment. Some may reject it for that reason. To be safe, write the check to yourself and put it in your checking account. Then, write the …

Best Way To Take Equity Out of Your House

December 27, 2021 by Finance Gourmet

One of the most frustrating things during my years as a financial planner was the number of people who insisted on paying their mortgage off early or adding extra principal to their mortgage payments and then, years later (or not) wanting to know the best way to take equity out of your house. Grrrr!!! If you’re not going to listen to me about the best place to invest extra money, or if you ended up with a ton of equity in your home thanks to rising home prices, or just living there for a decade or more, then listen to me now about the best way to take money out of your home equity. Take Money Out of Your Home’s Equity by Refinancing Usually, taking money out of your home equity by refinancing is dumb. However, with interest rates at historical lows, and lenders competing with each other, it is possible to take equity out of your home, lower your interest rate, and pay lower expenses, all without sticking you with a big loan that you have to pay back. Here is how it works. Let’s say you owe $300,000 on a house worth $500,000. You have $200,000 in equity. …

Is An Income-Driven Repayment Plan Best for Me?

December 11, 2020 by Finance Gourmet

student loan repay income based payments

Many people with student loan payments don’t realize they have multiple options for repaying their student loans easier. One option is the income-driven repayment plan that the federal government offers for loans owned by the US Department of Education. The key to income-driven student loan payment is that your student loans are forgiven at the end of the repayment period even if you still owe more money on your student loans. These loan repayment options are a helpful choice for those who have a high-student loan balance, and a career with little chance for a high salary. How Can I Lower My Student Loan Payments With a Different Loan Repayment Plan? There are actually several different ways to repay your student loans over time. Most borrowers just go with a 30-year repayment plan and essentially take on an additional mortgage. However, there are numerous different plans, including plans based upon your income. Financial advisors and those who writing about financial independence are often rightly dinged for not writing about how to help those with lower incomes. Income-driven repayment plans are one way to help those with lower incomes repay their student loans faster and easier. Open a 529 Plan Online …

Covid Student Loan Relief Ending Soon

November 16, 2020 by Finance Gourmet

In March, the government began offering options to help benefit borrowers with student loans during the Covid pandemic. The Covid student loan benefits were to stop collecting on student loans, to charge 0% interest rates on student loans, and to suspend student loan payments. Basically, you could turn off paying on your student loans with no detriment. Or, if you were one of the lucky ones still doing well during the Covid crisis, you could keep making loan payments and get ahead thanks to zero percent interest. The benefits only applied to federal student aid loans, and do not apply to private student loans. One of the downsides of programs like SoFi student loan refinances is that the refinanced loans become private student loans and no longer benefit from any federal student loan programs, even though the Sofi student loans interest rates can be much lower than regular student loans. Private student loans are not regulated by the Department of Education Student Loan Covid Scams Unfortunately, as is often the case, scammers were not far behind the news announcing these student loan aid provisions. They came back out when Congress passed a law making the Covid student loan aid last …

How To Get Student Loan Forgiveness

December 11, 2020March 7, 2020 by Finance Gourmet

Student loans have gotten huge for some graduates. It’s no wonder that there is increasing interest in how to get student loan forgiveness. Unfortunately, there are very few circumstances in which you can get the government to pay off your loans or otherwise cancel your student loan debt. Student Loan Forgiveness Program There is a small subset of jobs that qualify for student loan forgiveness, and believe it or not, being in the military is not one of them. (Theoretically, you are supposed to qualify for help paying for college by serving before you go to college, so the idea is that you wouldn’t need help with student loans.) The most commonly used student loan forgiveness program involves either working in “public service,” or as a teacher. For the regular direct type of student loans, the teacher student loan forgiveness program requires you to teach for five complete AND consecutive at a school that serves primarily low-income students. The exact schools that qualify are ones that: are in a school district that qualifies for Title I funds have been selected by the U.S. Department of Education based on being more than 30 percent students that qualify for Title I services is …

Is Leasing a Car Bad?

October 3, 2018 by Finance Gourmet

There are far too many people out there insisting that certain things are “bad” in every case. For example, some very prominent financial personalities will tell you that you should never lease a car. While car leases aren’t necessarily a great deal all of the time, neither is getting a regular car loan, or even buying a car for that matter. If you don’t know what you are doing, and work with people you can’t trust, you can get strung out in any number of ways during a car purchase. The lease isn’t the only potential problem What Is a Lease? So, what exactly is a car lease? When you lease a car, you change the mechanics of the standard auto loan, but at the end of the day, both processes are a way to borrow money to buy a car in exchange for monthly payments. Check out my Credit Karma reviews When you buy a car using financing, you can either get an auto loan, or an auto lease. Most people are at least familiar with the basics of a car loan, so let’s start there and move onto how a lease works. Auto Loan With an automotive loan, you …

Credit Scores Make No Sense

April 4, 2017 by Finance Gourmet

I spend a lot of time talking about whether or not the free credit scores from CreditKarma, or the WalletHub free credit scores, or the credit scores from Credit Sesame are “real credit scores” or not. The reality is that most of the time, it doesn’t actually matter. If it’s a Tuesday afternoon and you are sitting on your porch with a cold one, it is irrelevant whether your credit score is 714 or 723 or 815. The only time it matters, is when you are actually getting a loan. An interesting situation this weekend has shown me that even those real credit scores aren’t really real. Real Credit Scores When most people talk about a “real” credit score, they mean a FICO score. Most lenders rely upon FICO scores to make a decision about lending or what interest rate you get. The catch is that there are numerous kinds of FICO scores ranging from those used to judge creditworthiness for credit cards, a different one for car loans, and another still for mortgages. Beyond that, there are three major credit bureaus and all three of them can yield a different score depending upon what has been reported to each company. In …