If you’re thinking of refinancing, you’re probably trying to figure out the best strategy for handling closing costs. A new calculator from the mortgage data and publishing company HSH.com aims to help you.
To use the tool, The New York Times says, you’ll need to enter information about your current loan and basic refinancing option and then the tool will fill in the rest and help you figure out whether you should opt for a traditional refinance; a low cash-out refinance, in which the closing costs are added into the loan amount; or a no cash-out refinance, in which no closing costs are charged but the interest rate on the loan is higher.
Shopping
Meantime, Mint.com recently released a free service called Mint Data that presents a snapshot of how much people in cities around the country are spending at individual vendors like restaurants, stores and gyms. It also lists which merchants are most popular.
The continuously updated anonymous data comes from the spending habits of Mint.com’s four million or so users who track their credit card, debit card and cash spending on the site. The tools is being refined. Jennifer Saranow Schultz at The New York Times experienced this:
It was still a bit clunky when I recently tried it out. I found it hard to tell the context for the average purchase amounts on the site because they weren’t labeled with any time frames. In addition, not all retailers are easily found with the search tool — I couldn’t easily find data about my gym, for instance — and the data doesn’t track what people actually purchased.I've used Mint for more than a year and find it an excellent service, especially considering its price: free.
I found the site most useful when I started with my city and then looked at the merchant purchase and popularity data for the categories and how this changed over time.
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