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Keeping track of your financial situation is critical for maintaining your financial health. You should be aware of your income and expenditures. To this end, keeping detailed records of where all your money comes from, is saved and spent is a project worthwhile undertaking. In the current financial economy, not staying on top of one’s finances has led millions of Americans to file for personal bankruptcy.

In addition to keeping your own records, a critical piece of your financial picture lies in your financial credit score. Credit scores are called FICO scores because the majority of credit bureau scores used in the United States are produced by Fair Isaac and Company, or FICO. FICO scores are provided to lenders by the three major credit reporting agencies - Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.

A FICO score measures your creditworthiness. Your score will fall between 300 and 500. Borrowers with higher FICO scores are less risky borrowers than those with low scores. They are more likely to pay off their debt and not default on a loan. The score is based on many factors, including payment history, outstanding debt, duration of credit history, negative credit information such as bankruptcies and collections and the amount of credit used vs. the amount of credit available.

Be aware that the 3 credit reporting agencies may report different FICO scores for you. The agency only considers the data in your credit report at that agency. If your current scores from the three credit reporting agencies are different, it’s probably because the information those agencies have on you differs.

If you request it, each of the nationwide consumer reporting companies — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — is required to provide you with a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months. Be sure to review your credit report from all 3 reporting agencies. If you find report errors, it is important to remedy the matter as quickly as possible. First, dispute those credit records on your credit report with the credit bureaus. A formal letter written to the agencies with all the details of the item in dispute should be accompanied by a copy of your report which identifies the item in question. Disputed credit report records are removed or corrected. Credit report records that are not confirmed are removed. Discuss negative credit report items with creditors and collection companies. After you discuss and make payment, creditors delete the negative accounts or change them to a positive credit rating.

Staying on top of your financial situation is critical to maintaining your financial stability. Don’t overlook the importance of repairing your credit with the three reporting agencies. The right information will help present a sound picture of your creditworthiness to all your creditors.

There is an unprecedented crisis brewing in the financial system. The Federal Reserve is lowering prime interest rates, yet mortgage interest rate predictions are still shooting up - what’s going on? And what might it mean for home owners like you today?

mortgage rates forecast

The most important thing home owners need to understand about interest rate predictions is how the interest rates set by the Fed and the interest rates charged by banks and other mortgage lenders are related.

Interest rates determined by the Fed affect the cost of borrowings for mortgage lenders. Financial institutions don’t own all the money they lend out as mortgages - they actually borrow 90% of what they lend out to home owners on the wholesale market.

Banks make their profits from the difference between what they pay when they borrow money, and what they charge when they lend it out.

When the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, it lowers the borrowing costs for financial institutions, so you would think that mortgage interest rate predictions would fall. However, banks and other lenders may choose not to pass on the reductions to home owners.

The reason for this is not greed - there is adequate competition in the mortgage lending market to ensure that no bank or other lender can profit unfairly. The reason is that being a mortgage lender just became a whole lot more risky, and risk raises interest rates.

Mortgage lenders are charging everyone more interest to offset their losses on the few who will fail to pay their mortgages. Until the US housing market settles down, default risk will stay high, and mortgage rate predictions will keep going up.

There is a limit to how much the Fed can lower interest rates, too. The actual interest rate (called the “nominal” rate) includes an allowance for inflation. To find the “real” interest rate, you subtract inflation from the nominal interest rate.

Today, when you do that, you get a negative number! It’s a real anomaly - nominal interest rates are lower than the inflation rate.

Clearly, this is a situation that cannot continue for long. Sooner or later, probably sooner, the Fed will have to raise interest rates to at least break-even levels, matching the rate of inflation. When it comes, the interest rate rise will immediately flow through into mortgage rates.

What we are saying is that it’s really only a matter of time, and not much time, before mortgage rates predictions rise again.

There is no way to read every blog about money. In fact, I doubt there is any way even to count them all. The best one can do is sample them. As part of my non-comprehensive random-walk survey of money blogs online, may I present a small selection of the results for your delectation. I have avoided the obvious mega-blogs powered by media and other vested interests - who wants to read more of that rubbish? Read them at your peril. But apart from that, this selection ranges from the tiny and specific to the eclectic and very amusing. Enjoy.

I have been reading a fairly comprehensive blog about investment advice, financial advice, mortgage rates predictions, financial planning, debt reduction, and how to be debt free. The general level of intelligence in the posts is a notch above the average internet page. One of the problems with the internet is that any fool can write and publish any article on any topic, and Google’s quality checking alogrithm doesn’t measure the intelligence of the content, just its relevance and uniqueness.

This blog has some good thoughts, reasonably well expressed, and that sets it head and shoulders about the average Adsense-financed “wall of words’ junk content that is proliferating around the internet on a daily basis.

Here’s a neat little blog covering a range of financial topics including credit cards, debt consolidation, refinancing advice, investment strategies and wealth building. It’s pretty new, so we shall see how it develops, but the start is promising. There is some original thought going in here - I know! Remarkable, isn’t it?

The advice is good, solid, reliable advice based on financial fundamentals, not the fad of the day or the latest get-rich-quick scheme. You can bookmark and return to posts and find them just as valuable weeks, months, or years later. This is education rather than entertainment or space-filling, and all too rare in the online mental junk food industry.

This is a variation in strategy, a blog about saving money, reducing debt, creative refinancing ideas, interest rates predictions, refinancing for debt consolidation, mortgage refinancing, reducing expenses, reducing monthly payments, and vehicle refinancing. Normally, I prefer blogs about a variety of financial topics, because financial independence requires a strategy across all aspects of one’s financial life, so a blog about financial advice, personal finances, mortgage advice, financial news, investment advice, financial advice, mortgage rates predictions, financial planning, debt reduction, and how to be debt free is more likely to add value than a blog about one specific aspect of finances.

I am making an exception in this case, because the mortgage is usually the largest financial commitment a person makes, and managing a mortgage well can make the difference between financial independence and a lifetime of indentured slavery. Many of these posts are very educational, well-written, and easy to understand, and mortgage finance is one area where the average consumer could do with being much better educated - just look at the foreclosure rates!

In general, I would recommend keeping an eye on the blog at moneytalksabout.com/blog. This blog pulls together RSS feeds from several other good quality money blogs, which saves time and effort in surfing around the internet to each blog, and the posts which are made directly to the Money Talks blog itself, in between the syndicated posts, are always good value.

I think that most consumers could benefit from reading about financial advice, personal finances, mortgage advice, financial news, investment advice, financial advice, mortgage rates predictions, financial planning, debt reduction, and how to be debt free on a regular basis. Money blogs are not the only way to gain this information, but they are convenient, provide bite-sized chunks of information, and if you choose well, provide reasonable quality information.

Of course, this handful of recommendations is hardly the be-all and end-all of money blogs. New money blogs come into existence every day, and there will be hundreds of undiscovered gems available elsewhere. Feel free to add a comment with the URL of your favorites, and why you like them. We can all help one another to sort the wheat from the chaff, and together we can pinpoint the best money blogs to be reading today.

Anyone who has been watching the mortgage rate predictions will have noticed that there is a growing trend for the mortgage interest rates predictions - and that trend is upward. Home owners have a very small window of time just now to lock in the current low interest rates before the Federal election. After that time, all bets are off. Interest rates will be cut loose from the political weights holding them artificially low.

Current Mortgage Interest Rates Predictions

Refinancing will often lower your monthly mortgage payment. Not only are interest rates currently rather low, but if you have had your mortgage for any length of time, you should have built up some equity in your home, which means that your new mortgage will also be for a lower principal amount - that is, the amount you need to borrow will actually be lower.

Combining lower interest rates with a lower principal loan amount can reduce mortgage payments quite dramatically.

You can use an online mortgage payment calculator to work out what your mortgage payments would be if you were to refinance.