8
In order to address the broader question in your title,
Should I be Wary of First-Time Home Ownership Programs?
It's important to point out that there are a huge variety of (legitimate) housing programs in the US which aren't well known, and which sometimes offer (completely legitimate) subsidies or features that are surprisingly attractive. Often these ...
4
Given that your employment contract explicitly says it's "fixed-term", I don't think you can say it's permanent.
The government site about fixed-term contracts is talking about specific rights that employees on fixed-term contracts get. In that context, I think excluding apprenticeships is just to make it clear that those specific rights don't apply to ...
3
What are the downsides to refinancing?
The downside is you pay closing costs upfront. The interest you save needs to make up for the closing costs within a reasonable time frame (4-5 years is a common rule of thumb). So if you pay $5,000 in closing costs and save $100 a month in interest, in 50 months you'll have made up the closing costs in interest ...
2
Different sources will give you different answers to this question, but typical recommendations are that you want to drop the interest rate by 1% or more to justify the closing costs involved in refinancing.
1
Usually any no-money-down mortgage (or low money down mortgage) requires the mortgagor to buy private mortgage insurance to guarantee the repayment. This insurance is priced to cover the risk of default and usually results in total costs that are significantly higher.
If there is no PMI, then usually there will be fees or higher interest rates.
The bankers ...
1
A donation/contribution to a trust is not considered a gift as long as the beneficiary has a future interest in the gift.
If you are referring to a payable on death account than it is the same as your parents leaving you the monies when they die--except it avoids probate. Note that your parents have a large estate exemption so this would only be relevant ...
1
As Nayuki points out you have too few days per year as 14 x 26 = 364 meaning you miss 1 day per year.
This results in two errors in your calculation
Your rate is a little too big, should be 0.001143 by using this formula (1 + 0.03 / 2)^(14 / (365/2)) - 1
You have too few periods as you use 26 payments x 25 years = 650, which should have been (365/14) x 25 =...
1
The main disadvantage of an interest only (IO) loan is that it typically has a higher interest rate than principal plus interest (PI) loans. If the rates were identical, then for a disciplined person it would be better to choose the IO loan, because then you can decide if and when it makes the most sense to start paying down the loan. For example, you might ...
1
Refinance the house. You can generally refinance up to 80% of the home's value. That would give you enough money to make payments for quite a while if necessary.
If they are over 62, then they can take out a reverse mortgage to cover the remaining balance and receive payments from the loan to help with living expenses. If they straighten out their income ...
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