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These days it’s all too easy to have your credit slip down a few notches. If you are looking to refinance, that’s not where you want to be, but it’s not the end of the world either. Let your FICO score dip below 680 and you could be a candidate for bad credit mortgage refinancing. It depends on the individual lender. Let it get down around 650 or worse and you’ll be a bad credit refinance candidate for sure. With the recent shakeup in the sub-prime lending market, many lenders are being more selective about who they’ll extend refinance loans to. They’ll be looking seriously at your recent credit history. Several sub-prime lenders have ceased operations or declared bankruptcy, so there are fewer options available to borrowers in the sub-prime category.

Even so, you can still refinance, bad credit or not. There are options available to you, so you can take advantage of better interest rates. This can be especially important if you purchased your home using an adjustable rate mortgage, and the 3 or 5 year initial period is about to expire. When it does, your mortgage will adjust upward. This can cost you an extra $200 – $600 per month in higher mortgage payments. Many people don’t have the financial wherewithal to absorb such an increase in their mortgage payment. Even if you do, there’s little reason to do so when you can refinance and avoid the payment increase. Read more of this >>

Moses is alleged to have received the 10 commandments on a mountain top, Now a new voice has been added from the Tower of FICO and the ordinary way of doing things has changed.

A successful marriage has always required astute planning, particularly financial. From years as a marriage counselor, it is my experience that the major hurdles are sex and money but not necessarily in that order. . And interestingly enough I required that any participant in the Marriage Symposium I sponsored be married a minimum of five years. This is an arbitrary figure determined by myself I have found that those married over five years have different problems than those married less. After five years the romanticism has flowered and the reality of spending your life with someone sightly different from the one I married has begun to come crashing down.

But these new FICO rules are raising havoc with married couples as well as with partners and live-ins.. For years it has been common practice to include one’s spouse as an authorized signatory on the other spouse’s credit cards.

At first blush, it seemed so romantic – signifying the oneness of our union. Then it became a practical matter. Put the spouse on the gasoline credit card so each could purchase fuel for his/her car at one’s leisure. Read more of this >>

Those of you who recently filed bankruptcy (and those bad credit scores) may be tempted, like I was, to ask a friend, parent or relative to co-sign on a loan with you.

Don’t do it.

It weakens your position with lenders. Once a lender sees a co-signer on one of your loans—the lender will question your stability and move into “cover their butt” mode. And the way lenders cover their butts, is by forcing you to get a co-signer on your next loan…and the loan after that…and the loan after that.

Bottom line: When you have an existing co-signed loan—the chance of a lender requiring a co-signer on your next loan increases significantly.

There are right ways to recover from bankruptcy (or just rebuild bad credit) properly and quickly. But having a co-signer only delays your recovery and sets you up for complications along the way.

If you are unable to qualify for the credit you need…take it as a sign that it is not meant to be…until you can qualify on your own.

What if you are asked to become a co-signer?

I have a core belief…and it goes something like this, “Lend people money only if you can afford not to get it back and you won’t hold a grudge if you don’t—but never ever lend people your credit.” Read more of this >>

There is just too much at stake for the lender and the borrower. Being proactive is the rule of the day. In the area of Adjustable Rate Mortgages, lenders are pre-empting “payment shock” by calling months ahead to determine the budget status of families looking down the barrel of a huge increase. Some lenders who are able through this intervention to obtain the whole story that will allow for skipping a payment called a forbearance process where the arrears are made up in smaller parallel payments while continuing on with the regular payment. Lenders are hedging their bets by getting involved in the non-payment or late payment profile process early on to dampen losses resulting from foreclosure.

Three years ago Aaron and Gwendolyn moved from sharing an apartment to marriage to having a set of twins to buying their first home. Aaron four years out of college was employed at a local engineering firm specializing in water treatment and sewer/water construction work for several cities and counties in a 60-mile radius. Aaron started at an entry-level engineering position and was working his way up project by project. He was working to passing exams and satisfying requirements to become a Professional Engineer and thus command more money. The pay increases due to a slowing workload were lagging what was projected. Gwendolyn is a Registered Nurse worked a flexible schedule of three twelve-hour shifts per week and since she worked from six in the evening to six in the morning they were able to avoid any outside childcare. This gave her plenty of time with the twins who were experiencing the terrible twos period of pleasantry. Read more of this >>