* You recently finished school, vocational training, or left military; * Your work is typically seasonal and gaps in employment are customary to industry * You may have been laid off from your job; or * Frequent employment changes are normal in your line of work (sales, contract work, etc.), but you have been consistently employed and maintained a consistent level of income over past 2 years.

You may want to pay off some debt to lower your debt-to-income ratio.

This step will make it easier to qualify for a mortgage loan if your debt ratio is high. Chances are good that if you’re already paying rent, making a mortgage payment will be a smooth transition. Along with mortgage payment, you’re also responsible for real estate taxes and insurance, and if required, mortgage insurance and homeowners dues. Work with us to determine monthly payment you can afford based on your income and standard debt-to-income ratio guidelines.

Establish a consistent savings pattern.

Saving money for a down payment, and still having enough reserves left over to cover two months of expenses in event of an emergency, is typically most challenging part o

Chris Rocks is a Mortgage Consultant specializing in helping First Time Home Buyers. Firsthometips.com, designed by Chris Rocks, is intended to make the process less complicated and less stressful.

The probability of a trade 'going wrong way' can be greatly reduced by setting up stringent entry criteria. In a day trading sense, best way to spot a breakout happening is to look for strong pushes thru trading 'support'. You could use ordinary 'floor traders pivots' for this, although by far best indicator for these levels I have ever personally found are of course levels from www.surefirething.com - breakouts from H4 have to be seen to be believed, and reversal breakouts up thru L3 are also pretty good (although you have to make sure gap between L3 and H3 is big enough to give you your trade, because it will also usually reverse at H3!). For more on this aspect of trading you might want to head on over to www.traders101.com and read up a little.

In a swing trading sense, you could try watching for a 'Grail' signal. These signals can be obtained free at www.tradestars.com for almost every stock in play, and provide darn fine entry points. A recent large-scale analysis showed that over 84% of 'Grail' signals provided trades that were 'in right direction' within 2 days of opening them. That's pretty good odds. Remember that www.tradestars.com signals are long AND short - you only want LONG signals for this stock trading strategy.

Regardless of good clean entry points, you still must always have a stop loss in place, because markets will come and get you if you don't. Period. How do you set a good stop loss? It's not so hard as you might think! Space precludes me explaining in this article, but topic is covered at www.traders101.com and I will expand on this in a later article. Good hunting!