The responsibility of owning a home can be scary, especially in this troubled economic environment. Use these 5 strategies to safeguard your mortgage in the face of economic disaster.With the state of our economy, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine losing your job or otherwise suffering an economic hardship that could affect your ability to make your mortgage payments. A sudden illness or accident that leaves you unable to work is another scary possibility.
Many people don’t want to consider these situations for obvious reasons. However, it’s in your best interest to prepare for the worst. After all, if you end up defaulting on your mortgage, you can lose your home, which will just make any bad situation so much worse.
There are of course, always options like running up credit card debt, taking money out of a 401K, and pursuing a HELOC loan if you have enough equity in your home. These should be last options, though, and should not constitute your main plan of action should tragedy strike.
Here are a few strategies that can be used both to prevent tragedy and to deal with it:
1) Start an emergency fund: This is simply the best thing that you can do to help bridge the gap if you have a financial difficulty. Not all experts agree on how much you need to save, but the general rule of thumb is that you should have at least 3-6 months worth of living expenses in an easy to liquidate fund.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be too easy to access. You don’t want to be tempted to use it for things like a new car or a last minute trip.
Even homeowners who are already deep in debt and trying to get out of it should have some kind of emergency fund on hand to take care of things like sudden car repairs or roof leaks.
2) Get a mortgage that is less than you can afford: While the mortgage industry generally pushes homebuyers to get the most house that they can afford, sometimes it makes sense to get less. Purchase a house that is slightly below your means and you’ll be able to easily keep up with payments even if you have a few tight months. Then, if you have a good month and can pay more, you’ll be able to do it.
3) Refinance your mortgage: If you haven’t already thought about it, look into refinancing your mortgage now to bring down your monthly payments. With closing costs and other fees, it takes a while to break even—so it probably doesn’t makes sense to refinance right when you get laid off. Start the process now and use the extra monthly savings to start your own emergency fund if you don’t already have one.
4) Get job-loss mortgage insurance: Job-loss mortgage insurance is now more readily available than ever. Sources ranging from traditional insurers to homebuilders to banks offer it.
Keep in mind that there is often a time gap between getting the policy and when it actually starts to pay out. This is to prevent people who know that they are going to lose their job shortly from taking advantage. Also, the insurance generally only covers the minimum payments needed to keep the mortgage from foreclosure. So, while it is a solution, a good emergency fund will also come in handy.
5) Find out how open your lender is to late payments: If you do get into a situation where you can’t pay your mortgage, you can sometimes work out an altered payment schedule with your lender. The lender may even waive late fees and refrain from reporting your issues to the credit bureaus. If you don’t warn your lender in advance, however, you will subject to these issues. Do some online research now to find out what your lender’s policies are to find out if you can buy yourself some time.
The best defense against sudden economic problems is to develop responsible financial habits before you get into trouble. At the very least, try to keep track of your spending and make sure that you are spending less than you earn.
No matter what course of action you take, some planning ahead of time can help to solve or at least slow down even the worst finance issues.
Source:
mortgageloan.com
