Now, take total of your debt payments and divide it by your income and you will have your debt to income ratio. Most lenders will want to see no higher than a 36 percent debt to income ratio, although there are a few exceptions.

If you find that your debt to income ratio is so high that you may not be able to quality for a mortgage, you should try to pay down some of it before applying for your loan. This will not only better your chances for a mortgage loan, but it will also ensure that you quality for one with better interest rates and terms.

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Try this exercise to calculate your personal wealth ratio. Add up all passive income you have earned over past month. For this exercise do not include paper assets such as stocks and bonds. Divide your monthly passive income by your monthly expenses to get your wealth ratio. If that number is one or higher, you can consider yourself wealthy. For example:

$200 (passive income) / $2000 (monthly expenses) = 0.1 (wealth ratio)par This individual has enough passive income to cover 10% of their monthly expenses. Those that choose to be rich make it their goal to achieve a high wealth ratio.