Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Here are some links to check out in the meantime on debt consolidation, some information to people interested in getting mortgages, or gettting a 1st mortgage1st mortgage. More information for people interested in a 2nd mortgage, or other types of mortgages. This site will point you to a good accelerated mortgage calculator, and one for a adjustable rate mortgage calculator. If your looking for auto refinance this page has info for you. Looking for an atlanta home refinance? How about a arizona mortgage? Or even better yet a california home mortgage? Already have one? Then you should look into a california loan refinance, and while you're at it some home improvement.

After purchasing our new house we decided to make our basement into a rec room. The floor was smooth concrete. I remember looking into strawbale homes before and seeing how nice the acid atlanta concrete floor stain looked. After looking around for contractors who worked with concrete acid stain and the frustration of finding someone available or the high cost involved it occurred to me that we could try do it yourself acid stain concrete. We were supposed to acid wash the concrete to etch it first but because of fear that the fumes would affect our pets we decided not to use the concrete acid stain and instead went with a more natural solution that didn't use acid, it cost us less than $100 to do it ourselves and looks great. Check out the results:

I've found this site to be a good central location to get info on mortgagesand other interesting stuff.

I lost a good chunk of change a daytrading few years back on the stock market. The dotcom bubble burst and the economy took a big hit, so I took a hit as well. That left me a little gun shy from the whole online investing game. But on a recommendation from my cousin I bought a bunch of shares of Sirius ( stock symbol SIRI ) with my Ameritrade account. My cousin pointed out that Sirius has a deal to do broadcasting for the NFL football games and that Howard Sterns popular radio show would soon be moving exclusively to Sirius around the end of the year. It made sense to me so I bought in at $6.62 a share a few weeks back. It's already jumped almost a dollar a share. I'm hoping it will jump some more once Howard Stern's show moves over to it. We'll see how it turns out.

One stock I wish I had held onto was Sonic Solutions (SNIC). I bought it a few years back at just under $3 a share. It gradually climbed to $11 a share and I sold it and recouped some of my loss from the other stocks that didn't do too well. I saw today that SNIC was trading at around $20 a share.WOOF! Wish I held that one!! But I did make a decent profit so I can't complain too much. But at the same time I don't want to calculate how much I could've made on it.

From my recent experience buying a home I learned by talking to bothe my real estate agent and my mortgage broker that those who have a credit score of 680 or better enjoy a much better interest rate, and a much easier time getting a mortgage than those with a FICO score under 680. Now we all probably know that having better credit is going to help, but this was the first time I actually received an actual number of what the minimum FICO score I should aim for should be. This is a good reason to start keeping track of your credit score by getting credit reports from all 3 agencies at least once a quarter. Click here if you don't know what your Credit Score is. Once you know that you can start shopping for a mortgage while mortgage rates are still low! Homeowners Click Here

After getting my mortgage I saw a much more detailed article that this post about the effects of credit score on your life. It was in this months issue of Consumer Reports.