With short-sale offer refused, foreclosure may end up the best option

However, if the agreements with the banks are such that they are not under a legal obligation to take your deal, then only a political solution can pressure banks to take a deal that is better for taxpayers and not so lucrative for the buyers of failed banks.

Unfortunately, your complaints may fall on deaf ears. In that case, you must do what is best for you, which may be to let the home go into foreclosure. Keep in mind that if the lender has reported your payments to the credit reporting bureaus, your credit history may have been damaged quite a bit by now.

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If the home goes into foreclosure, your credit history and credit score will suffer more, but your main priority now must be to take care of your husband. After you and your husband make it through that fight, you can work to rebuild your credit history and credit scores.

If the bank is willing to work with you, then work with it. If, as you have said, you have done all that you can to get the home sold, found a buyer and offered to take money out of your retirement accounts to pay the lender, and yet the lender rejected that offer, you’ve done as much as you can.

You must be very secure and able to see into the future, but to recommend to others that they shorten the term of their mortgage is inviting trouble.

What happens if one of a married couple loses his or her job? What if both spouses lose their jobs or get sick? Any number of things can go wrong and have an adverse effect on a family’s income. What do you do, ask the bank to reduce your payment and extend the amortization schedule when your income is reduced and you are in no position to qualify for credit?

However, if you take the longest amortization possible on your loan, you will be protected on the downside. You can pay down the loan as much as you want over the years. Oh, I can hear you now: Most people don’t have the discipline to pay extra on their mortgage. Well, in that case, they don’t have the discipline to have a short-term mortgage, either.

I paid down my 30-year mortgage in six years. As a self-employed person, I am more aware than some of what can go wrong, and I always leave myself breathing room.

I suggest you rethink your plan of shoving people into short-term mortgages, especially in our current depression.

First, congratulations on paying off your loan in six years. Good for you.

Our advice has been the same for years. There are three primary ways to tell if you’re getting a great deal on a refinance: if you lower the interest rate; if you lower the monthly payment; or if you shorten the loan term.

The only way to save the most money (and know for sure you’re getting a good deal) is for at least two of these to be true. The best scenario is when you’re lowering the interest rate, lowering the monthly payment and shortening the term of the loan.

While renewing for a 30-year term might make sense for some people, you’re not maximizing the amount of money you can save.

If you have already paid down eight years of the loan, you’ll actually lose money in almost every scenario if you stretch the loan term back to 30 years. For example, if you have 22 years left on your loan, shortening the loan term to 20 or 15 years (preferably 15) means you save years of payments on the mortgage. That translates into thousands of dollars.