Portland Refinance Help

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 when you stop to consider all the effort that is going into creating new programs for struggling home owners, even if you have the feeling that you wouldn’t qualify for a Portland refinance right at this moment, it wouldn’t hurt to just talk to a mortgage professional to learn more. You never know, you might be pleasantly surprised.

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.

In earlier articles we covered a couple of different approaches to what you might do with that money. In each example we used the hypothetical number of $175 in monthly savings from your new, lower rate 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. For our example we used two cards with interest rates of 12% and 16% carrying balances of $4000 and $8000 respectively. 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.

The second example showed how you could apply that savings toward the principle balance on your Portland mortgage to pay it off sooner. We used a loan amount of $225,000 at 5%. When we applied the $175 per month savings to the principle, we shaved over seven years off the mortgage and paid it off in just under 23 years rather than 30. What does that add up to for you? Over $58,000 in savings.

Our third option would be for you to invest that money each month. The investment goals could be anything from your retirement to a vacation to a child or grand child’s college expenses. The reason is totally up to you, we just want to show you what you might be able to accomplish with this ‘modest’ monthly contribution.

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). We’re going to use a conservative annual rate of return of 7% for this example.

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.

Now let’s look at a different person; a 30 year old who has plans to retire when they turn 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. By the time you turn 65, if you had done nothing else for your retirement, this account alone would have over $300,000 in it. Once again, this is a pretty impressive sum considering we’re using conservative numbers.

You need to remember that the numbers above are just for illustrative purposes; your results may vary. 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.

In the end though, it is worth understanding that even things that may initially appear like ’small change’ can have a big impact on your long term financial goals. Your Portland home mortgage is more than a bill; it should be part of your overall financial plan.