Portland Home Mortgage Guide

Everywhere you turn you can read about the fact that Portland mortgage rates are at historic lows and that now is a great time to refinance. And considering some of the new programs being implemented to help homeowners with their mortgages and mortgage payments, it would be worth talking to your mortgage lender even if you think you might not be in a position for a Portland refinance right now. You never know, one of these programs might be just the thing for your existing situation.

Once you’ve established that you can do a Portland refinance, and that it makes sense for you to do so right now, the next question will be; what to do with the savings you’ll be getting. While that might sound ridiculous, if you don’t make a plan for what to do with that extra cash, it will just ‘disappear’ into your day to day expenses and will never have the kind of impact on your life that it could.

A couple of different suggestions as to how you might apply that money to your ‘big picture’ were made in previous articles. In each situation we used the same hypothetical savings of $175 per month from your new refinanced Portland home loan. That is a decent amount of money to be sure, but probably not something to get overly excited about at first. However, with a bit of disciplined effort applied to that money, we showed how it could turn into something that you can excited about.

In our first example applied the money to pay off existing credit card debts. In that example we used two credit cards; one with a $4000 balance at 16% and the other at 12% with an $8000 balance. We applied the extra $175 to the minimum required payment to show that we could pay them off in about 4 years as opposed to the twenty-three years it would take paying just over minimum monthly payments.

In the next example we illustrated how you could pay off your Portland mortgage faster by applying the extra money to the principle each month. We used a loan amount of $225,000 at 5%. By applying our extra cash to the principle each month, we reduced the time to pay off the mortgage by over 7 years. Those 7 years of not paying on the mortgage equates to a savings of over $58,000.

The last option we will talk about is putting that money to work by investing it. It could be for your retirement, or for a child’s college education. No matter what your motivation is behind your investing, we just want you to be aware of what potential exists for you with this ’small’ amount of extra cash you now have.

In trying to predict what kind of return you might get from an investment, we have to make some guesses. We’ll use conservative numbers to be safe.

Let’s say that for the next 18 years you’re going to add $175 to an account that already has $2000 in it (working on a college fund for a new baby). To remain conservative, we’re going to use an annual rate of return over those 18 years of only 7%.

So what does baby have waiting when they turn 18? A bit over $83,000! That’s a pretty good start for college, I would say.

Let’s say that instead of college for a child, you’re a 30 year old looking to retire at age 65. We’re also going to say that this account is starting off with a balance of ZERO, but it gets the $175 savings added to it each and every month. Doing nothing else for this account or your retirement, by the time you were 65 this account would be worth more than $300,000. Once again, this is a pretty impressive sum considering we’re using conservative numbers.

You need to remember of course that these figures are all hypothetical. However, if they whet your appetite at all, you should definitely consider sitting down with not only a professional mortgage advisor to see about refinancing your Portland home loan, but also with a financial planner and/or an accountant.

The main point that we hope you get here is that while some savings may appear to be rather insignificant at first, if you apply yourself properly, you can have a dramatic positive effect on your long term financial well being. The mortgage on your Portland home loan is really just a part of your bigger, overall long term financial plan.