Hi gammyt, Unless you have a fairly high-ratio mortgage or are seeking a substantial loan, quite likely the lender may not be too worried about a precise evaluation. That said, though, with the recent mortgage problems, and general reduction in prices of homes in quite a few areas, perhaps they will be quite concerned, more so than they would have been a year or so ago. In any case, as part of the procedure related to setting up the loan, they may very well come out to make an evaluation on their own. Quite likely charging for doing so. If you have a connection with a realtor, quite likely that person would give you an estimate, even if only a rough one made after hearing a full description of the various aspects of the home, without coming out to look at it. Knowing nothing of your circumstances, other debts, including student, auto or of other kinds, I cannot speak with any knowledge of your situation. That said, I hope that you will make an attempt to get this loan that you are contemplating, paid off over a short term, if possible, especially if the reasons behind it have provided only a short-term benefit. When I see folks making a loan that they plan to pay off over, say, a five year period ... ... to finance a vacation which will take place this year only, it troubles me some. For the cost of that vacation is not only the money laid out now, but includes also the total amount of interest paid on that loan over the full term that one carries it. And repayment of the principal and interest is effectively a reduction in effective income over all of the period that you carry it. I am especially troubled, having been a personal financial advisor for a numbr of years, to see folks add such expenses to their e.g. 25 year mortgage ... ... which means that they'll be paying it off, plus interest, for 25 years. And, if they arrange to make no increase in the amount of their regular payment, it means that they don't really start paying off the principal of that loan until all of the earlier part of the mortgage is fully paid off - what, 15 years (oe more) down the road? What sense does it make to take a vacation, even buy a car, now ... and not start paying off the loan for 15 years? If you'd made a serious effort to have paid off the loan over a short period ... ... think of all of the other interesting/useful/enjoyable things that you could have done with all of that interest plus principal expense! Enough preaching ... about an issue that's none of my business! Good wishes for increasing skill at management of both your income and assets - nobody cares as much about your money as you (except someone that'd like to shift some of it from your pocket into his/hers). ole joyful

GreenPath is a Credit and Debt Counseling Organization and operates under the same terms I described above. There is a big difference between debt consolidation with a Credit Counselor and a Debt Consolidation Loan. Anyone who is looking to consolidate their payments as a means to reduce their debt is kidding themselves. It MAY reduce your payments (for now) but it will not in any way reduce your debt. In fact, it will make your debt even larger and take much longer to pay off. The bottom line here is... YOU CAN'T BORROW YOUR WAY OUT OF DEBT! If you find yourself in this position then a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy (Reorganization) may be your best bet. It will include ALL your debts, secured and unsecured, into just one (usually) much smaller monthly payment for 36 to 60 months. Again, bankruptcy is easier to recover from than a credit counselor. What you should really be looking at is how you spend your money. Don't use a Budget, they're like Diets, they don't work. What you need is a good Spending Plan. A Spending Plan is not offered by any Credit Counselors I know of. Of course they will tell you different. If that is so then why do 75% of their clients fail? My Grandmother practiced the old Envelope Theory of Bill Paying and Money Management. What I did was digitized it for my own use. I'm not talking using MS-Money or Quicken. Those are Budgeting programs or After The Fact accounting systems. I created digital envelopes on a spreadsheet that even my kids can use. I divided it up into Alphanumonic Categories or Envelopes... A is for Auto / Transportation B is for Babysitting / Child Care C is for Contributions / Charity D is for Dining Out / Fast Food E is for Education F is for Food and Household Items G is also for Grooming H is for Housing I is for Insurance I is also for Income J is for Just for Fun K is for Kids L is for Leisure M is for Medical / Dental N is for Not Planned For O is for Other / Misc P is for Payments (all debts) Q is for Gifts / Holidays / B-Days etc. R is for Record Keeping / Postage S is for Savings / Investments T is for Taxes U is for Utilities V is for Vices W is for Wardrobe X is for Business Expenses Y is a Question I ask myself. The answer is Because it works. Z is for the sleep I get when Im on track and living comfortably within my means. Each "Category" has several sub-categories and each one has a monthly amount to spend. If I don't spend it all the remainder goes to my savings. Only a few categories will have money that forwards to the next months Spending Plan. I call this, Saving My Savings. What I found is that after just 90 to 120 days I had 10% to 20% of my Income left over at the end of the month, after ALL the bills were paid, to do anything I wanted with. I even found that by applying a Domino or Roll-up system to my P for Payments envelope, I could retire ALL my debt in approximately one-third the normal time period without ever having to change my payments, add more money to my payments or having to borrow to consolidate. My $185,000 in debts that would have taken me 26 more years to pay off will be completely gone in less than 7 years for not a dime more than I'm paying right now. Emergencies aren't a problem either because one of my envelopes is Savings. Within just a few months I had over $2500 in my Emergency Fund at the Credit Union. Everything over that goes to my Self Directed Roth IRA to grow Tax Free. When I started this my wife and I only made a combined income of less than $40,000 per year and we have 6 kids to boot. Anyone can do it, it just takes discipline. Oh. Yes, I have been asked many times if I would right a book about my system. The answer is yes, and Ive been working on it for about 15 years now. At this pace it should be done in about 10 more years. LOL You see Im really good about Spending my time doing other things like reading all your posts on Garden Web. Good Luck, Scotty

You can get either death or disability insurance on your mortgage, or both. There's about four times the possibility of disability for an extended period that there is of death ... and, while a funeral is expensive, dead people don't eat, but disabled people do ... and may need medical/rehabilitative costs, as well. Some prefer to buy a term policy for one or both, themselves, for if the bank sets it up, they are the payee, not the person(s) purchasing the home, whle if the homeowner purchases it, they are the payee and it will be their responsibility to pay the lender. Some prefer to have coverage at a specific level throughout, rather than the decreasing value as the principal gets paid off, as usually there is little difference in premium, and as the debt is reduced through regular payment down of principal, there is some extra available to support the family in a difficult time. When paying student loan, usually one knows what portion of the payent goes for interest and which goes to pay down principal owing. But the level of mortgage payment remains level throughout, which means that in the early days of the loan, when the balance owing is high, the amount that goes to interest each year must be high, meaning that little of each payment goes to pay off principal. Many people pay little attention to the amount of principal that is paid off annually through the first few years, though many of them received a schedule showing what the ratios were at the time of each payment, throughout. They are greatly surprised when they find out how little of the principal has actually been paid, at the end of each year. They are suprised to learn that, in those early years, if they made an additional payment of an amount equal to one of the month's payment, designating it as to reduce principal only, it would reduce the balance owing by a larger amount than did all of the other 12 monthly payments. With student loans, the amount allocated to principal and to interest is more easily identifiable, I think. Good wishes. ole joyful

I have some equity-based mutual funds, bought a number of years ago: some have a good growth record, but several don't. About 40 years ago, when I practised as a liberal Protestant clergyperson, some of my parishioners wondered how come I subscribed to financial periodicals. I told them that bread cost me the same price that it cost them, so learning how money works was important - perhaps especially so for me, as my annual income was quite likely lower than theirs. Further, since I lived in a church-owned house, when I retired, became disabled, or fired ... I'd have to provide my own housing - and that at a higher price than it was at that time. Personally, after over 20 years as a personal financial advisor, during the first year of which I sold mutual funds, but after that selling no financial products, I prefer to see people invest directly into stocks, when someone becomes knowledgeable about the markets, and has some asset base built up. It has been my understanding that markets usually average more like 7 - 8% over the long term, and if U.S.-based fund managers charge 1.5%, that's about 20% of the growth. A number of managers in Canada charge over 2% for basic equity-based funds, higher for some kinds: which is more like 25 - 30% of the average rate of growth. It is my understanding that Merriman, referred to above, is primarily interested in mutual funds - is he involved in selling them? There was a guy in this area that used to publish a book annually evaluating mutual funds, who doesn't any longer, I think, as he felt that there were more effective ways to fly. Some advisors have a system of buying stocks based on the Dow-Jones Average (e.g. "Dogs of the Dow" - high dividend payers, at low stock price) which has, over many years, provided a better rate of return than most of the mutual fund managers have achieved. I've not followed those results relative to the Dow - but a person who has evaluated a similar system based on the Toronto market has done better than 90% of fund managers, back-checked almost 30 years. Which means that I can put the fund manager's fees (and the trailer fees that they pay to the fund sales people) into my own pocket. Tonight I'm to attend a monthly meeting with about 20 other local subscribers to a major Canadian personal money management magazine, which carries no ads, so is totally subscriber driven. The local meeting has been in operation for over 10 years - I've been attending for about 6 or 7 years, I think. They approach money management from a variety of viewpoints: I've learned a lot there. Plus the course that stockbrokers take (over 20 years ago) and six courses leading to Chartered Financial Planner (only passed 5). Though they are a bit tough, would be useful for many individual investors, I think. Every one of us has a part-time job: learning how to manage money. Some do it much more effectively than others - and most of the others suffer for their ignorance/shortage of knowledge. Good wishes for effective management of your money - think of all of the extra hours of work you'll have to put in to build a comparable lifestyle, if you don't. I dislike seeing folks flush $50. bills down the toilet, so to speak. ole joyful