The Make No Mistakes Budget Checklist is designed to help you clearly see where you spend your income. We know the checklist will help you be more aware of your financial health. This is crucial, because we want you to be honest with yourself as you determine if owning a home is the right move for you. In Chapter 2, we stated that there are reasons why owning a home is not right for everyone. So be honest with yourself. Though home ownership offers many benefits, it can be a huge weight on your shoulders if you are strapped every month to keep up with your monthly payments. Don’t be overwhelmed or afraid to work through the Budget Checklist. Reality is sometimes harsh, but believe us when we say the reality of making a wrong decision on a home purchase is more than harsh – it’s a nightmare. We’re here to make sure your home-buying experience, whether you do it today or sometime in the future, is a not a nightmare but a dream come true.
Before we get started on the checklist, let’s define a few terms. Revolving debt is an important one. This is debt a borrower has applied for and which carries an outstanding balance. You make payments on your revolving debt at regular intervals. Examples of revolving debt are credit cards, a car loan, and a mortgage note, i.e., a mortgage loan. When you talk with a loan officer for the first time and he or she looks at your credit report, your revolving debt is primarily what the loan officer will use to determine if and how much house you can afford. Even though you probably make other monthly payments for such things as utilities and medical bills, they will not appear on your credit report (unless you don’t pay them at all, in which case they’ll show up as collections) and they won’t be factored into the loan officer’s decision because they’re not considered revolving debt.
Let’s get started on your Budget Checklist. While we show excerpts of the checklist in this chapter and that may be all you need for now, you might want to download a copy of the checklist and have it displayed on your computer screen while we explain how easily it works. It’s in Excel and uses several of the software’s unique features, so you’ll get more benefit from working with it onscreen than you will from a printed copy. Visit our website at http://www.makenomistakes.com/, click on “Real Estate Forms and choose the items you want to download.
No comments:
Post a Comment