Credit Score Club

Low interest rates and house price falls have made it cheaper to buy a home than to rent one in four out of five British cities, research indicated today.

The cost of renting a typical first-time buyer property is 9.7 per cent more than buying a similar home, based on an interest-only mortgage charging a rate of five per cent, according to property website Zoopla.co.uk.

Milton Keynes is the most expensive town in which to rent a home rather than buy one, with a two-bedroom home costing 43 per cent more than mortgage payments on a comparable property.

House about that: Research shows that renting isn’t always the cheapest option

It is followed by Birmingham, where renting costs 37 per cent more than buying, and Warrington and York, where rents are 29 per cent higher than mortgage costs.

It would be 27 per cent more expensive to rent a home than to buy one in Northampton and Coventry, with Bradford, Preston, Peterborough and Barnsley completing the top 10 locations where being a homeowner makes better financial sense than being a tenant.

Even in London, it is still 16 per cent cheaper to buy a home on an interest-only basis than it would be to rent a comparable property.

At the other end of the scale, people are still better off renting in Poole, where it is 27 per cent cheaper to be a tenant than to buy a home, while rents are 12 per cent lower than mortgage payments would be in Plymouth.

New town: It’s definitely a buyer’s market in Milton Keynes

Renters are eight per cent better off than buyers in Stockport, while people can save seven per cent by being a tenant in Oldham and four per cent in Bristol and Huddersfield.

It is also slightly cheaper to rent a home than to buy one in Bournemouth, Lincoln and Swansea, while average rents and mortgage payments cost around the same in Cardiff.

Nicholas Leeming, business development director of Zoopla.co.uk, said: ‘The relative cost of renting as opposed to buying has increased over the past 12 months as rents have risen and house prices and interest rates have remained flat.

‘Almost 750,000 would-be first-time buyers have reluctantly ended up as renters over the past three years as a result of being unable to get a mortgage.

‘With current house prices and interest rates where they are and with rents on the rise, for those who can get a mortgage, there may never have been a better time to buy.’

Roth-ira.org, is Individual Retirement Agreement plan in the US, with tax benefits when certain criteria are met. It’s name after it’s founder William Roth, late Senator of Delaware. According to Roth IRA, a person can save money, that can be used during his retirement, thus becoming an ideal alternative for traditional IRA. Full Post…

The following is a guest post from Genworth Financial and is a follow-up to their post titled How to Buy Long-term Care Insurance: What Every Policy Should Include.

To continue the series on long-term care insurance, I’d like to further discuss important considerations when choosing policies and benefits.

As of 2010, two-thirds of people will need some long-term care, such as home care, assisted living or nursing home care after they reach age 65, yet only 35% of people believe they will need such care. That’s a staggering discrepancy, and speaks to an underestimation of the financial, emotional and even social anxieties that can result from under preparedness. But

Full Post…

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released their Second Quarter 2011 Mortgage Metrics Report last week. In the report, they covered the success the banking industry is having in each of several categories regarding the current housing crisis. Here is what they found:

Loan modifications –

These are “actions that contractually change the terms of mortgages with respect to interest rates, maturity, principal, or other terms of the loan.”

Down 18.1% from the first quarter and down 19.5% from last year.

Completed foreclosures -

Where “ownership of properties transferred to servicers or investors. The u

Full Post…

Its almost been a month into the contentious Durbin Amendment—a rule conceived of to provide small businesses that accept debit cards savings—and now the numbers are in.

According to a new impact analysis released by Heartland Payment Systems, the fifth largest online payments processor in the United States, merchants across the United States of America have saved an average of $260.24 per $100,000 in debit card purchases they accept since the rule took effect. The data was collected between Oct. 1 and Oct. 16 across the credit card issuers portfolio of 250,000 merchants.

Heartland also did us the service of providing information on what those savings will be for merchants per $100,000 in accepted transactions on a state-by-state basis. Her

Full Post…

For many savvy credit card users, credit card rewards add up to a mere one or two percent of annual spending. As a credit card enthusiast, my goals are somewhat loftier. By maximizing the cash back and loyalty reward points I earn, I have been able to increase my reward card earnings far beyond that point and amass over $5,000 in rewards during a single year.

No reward card enthusiast’s wallet would be complete without at least one cash back credit card. I earn about $5-10 each month in cash back from my Simply Cash American Express business card, which I use just for office supplies and wireless bills to take advantage of the 5% cash back this card offers in these categories. I

Full Post…