Finance: Interest Rates Up, Up and Away?

Interest Rates Up, Up and Away?

Written by Cindy S. Morus

Interest rates have been at their lowest levels in over 40 years. U.S. consumers have been able to purchase previously unaffordable homes, cars and other toys. Many have used cheap home equity loans to remodel, take vacations and pay off credit cards. Students have taken advantage of repparttar

rock-bottom student loan rates.

But, interest rates look to be headed up. Recently, Alan Greenspan and repparttar 112446 Federal Reserve escalated repparttar 112447 Fed funds rate from 1% to 1.25%. So, what does that mean to you and me?

The increase in rates is important if you have variable (not fixed) loans. For example, if you have adjustable rate mortgage or home equity lines of credit, repparttar 112448 interest rates will probably go up (as well as repparttar 112449 payments) in repparttar 112450 next few months. Each time repparttar 112451 Fed increases repparttar 112452 Fed funds rate, it will roll down onto your adjustable rate loans and your payments will go up. The speed of increase and repparttar 112453 amount of repparttar 112454 increase will depend on what index your loan is based on – check with your lending institution for more information on that.

If you have high credit card debt, repparttar 112455 situation may be even more bleak because credit card rates remained high while other rates have been incredibly low. The Fed increases are a good excuse for your credit card company to hike your rates even higher.

So, what can you do if you’re looking at rates and payments going up, up and away?

Your payment increases may be fairly gradual. Depending on repparttar 112456 economy, repparttar 112457 Fed will continue to increase rates although they have signaled that repparttar 112458 increases are likely to be very gradual. If repparttar 112459 economic or political situation changes, they always have repparttar 112460 ability to lower rates again. The Fed's rate-setting committee is scheduled to meet again Aug. 10, Sept. 21, Nov. 10 and Dec. 14, and they may skip a rate increase at one of those meetings if inflation is subdued. Check with your student loan lenders to see about consolidating and locking in rates. Good news: interest rates on savings are also likely to increase! So, if you have CD’s coming due, check with different financial institutions before automatically rolling them over. If you have money stashed in savings accounts, repparttar 112461 rates are probably starting to creep up. I highly recommend ING savings for repparttar 112462 highest rates around (http://www.ingdirect.com). They also give great service, have no fees or hidden costs and are FDIC insured. You can also name your accounts at ING to make it easy to identify what you’re saving for.

How Much is In-store 'Insurance' costing You?

Written by Colin mc Caig

REPRINT GUIDELINES: Please feel free to reprint this article in your ezine or on your site, as long as you leave all links in place and include repparttar

resource box as listed above. A quick email to inform me would also be appreciated. Thanks.

TITLE: How Much is In-store 'Insurance' costing You?

AUTHOR: Colin Mc Caig

EMAIL: mailto:colin@cmcaig.com

AUTORESPONDER: mailto:warranties@demandmail.com

WORD COUNT: 475

KEY WORDS: Extended warranties, bad deal, shop around

DESCRIPTION: Extended warranties may seem a great deal, but frequently turn out to be a costly luxury.

'How Much is In-store "insurance" Costing You?'

by Colin mc Caig

I saw it coming, but many of us still don't.

No sooner had I handed my card over to pay for my new DVD, than I was hit with that famous question that meets repparttar 112445 unwary at repparttar 112446 point of sale...

'Would Sir care to insure his purchase against breakage...'

It's a fact that high-street outlets still sell millions of this 'insurance' each year.

Unfortunately, for Joe Public, though, they're rarely worth repparttar 112447 paper they're written on.

Indeed, in repparttar 112448 majority of cases, it's generally cheaper to pay for breakage as you go, particularly as many extended warranties can come to more than *half* repparttar 112449 cost of your actual purchase.

Add to this, that we live in a competitive world with goods bought today far more reliable than 10-20 years ago, you really have to question who's getting repparttar 112450 best deal here.

In fact, I can still think of a cheap video recorder I bought 4 years ago. It came with a 1-year guarantee and it's still going strong today.

So how do you make sure you're not caught out?

Well, here are a few pointers:

1. Don't fall for repparttar 112451 standard 'hard sell' techniques until you have all repparttar 112452 facts up front. These are frequently employed to foist unwanted warranties on repparttar 112453 unwary.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>