Adjustable Mortgage
by Scott Bilker
Scott Bilker is the author of the best-selling books, Talk Your Way Out of Credit Card Debt, Credit Card and Debt Management, and How to be more Credit Card and Debt Smart. He's also the editor and publisher of DebtSmartŪ.
Dear Scott,
Our credit isn't too good. My husband had open heart surgery about a year ago and lost three months of work. We have some 30-60 days late. How do we get our credit back into order. Also our home is 100% financed. We have a adjustable rate on our mortgage. How do they decide if the rate goes up or down. How is it calculated and when? Every quarter? Thanks for your time.
--Nellie
Answer
Nellie,
Glad to hear that your husband is doing well after heart surgery.
The best way to start getting your credit back in order is to contact the banks and let them now what's going on. Ask them to make payment arrangements that you can handle, also ask them if they can remove those late payment comments from your credit report.
The basic ARM (adjustable rate mortgage) adjusts the interest once a year, three years, or five years. However, some may have special conditions so you'll need to look at your mortgage agreement to know the exact terms. Interest rates can be based on a variety of interest indexes, so again, you'll need to look at your specific mortgage but that information should be easily found in the original paperwork.
As far as saving money on the mortgage goes, it always seems that banks are much quicker to raise rates than to lower them. Right now is a great time to start looking into refinancing that mortgage to a lower fixed rate. That's because many financial experts believe that rates will decline further this month. Try applying for the refinance by click on
http://www.debtsmart.com/loan
Good luck and please let me know what happens.
Scott
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