Month: January 2009

Minimize Interest with a Mortgage Payment Calculator

Taking out a mortgage is an exciting but often a slightly concerning prospect. To take out a loan, often hundreds of thousands of dollars in worth, you are essentially putting your home on the loan. If you fail to pay the loan back in whatever amount of time that was specified, you could very well end up losing your home to the lender. Nobody wants to face foreclosure, but by taking a few simple precautions, you can live within your means and still take out a considerable loan. A mortgage payment calculator allows home owners (aspiring or current) to take a look at their finances and how much a loan will cost so that they can determine if a loan is really within their means to repay.

Save Money and Time

The old saying save money and time might be a bit clich, but it applies perfectly to a mortgage payment calculator. However, it does not truly apply to the use of the calculator itself (while free, it pales in comparison to the actual loan in terms of cost). Instead, the mortgage payment calculator is perfect for helping home owners save time and money on the loan itself. For example, home owners can plan how to pay off the interest to complement their income. Also, home owners can determine how much money they can save in interest alone by paying the loan off bi-weekly as opposed to monthly (and such savings tend to be significant).

However, a mortgage rate calculator is also useful for helping users cut years off their loans. It’s certainly not out of the question for a home owner to shave seven or eight years off their loan with careful planning and repayments. Wouldn’t you rather pay your loan off in a little over twenty years instead of a full thirty? Mortgage payment calculators provide home owners with even greater financial flexibility without delving into dangerous territory, such as variable rate loans.

However, one fantastic rule of thumb that everyone should adhere to is to only take out what you absolutely require. Even by minimizing total accumulated interest, mortgage payment calculators can’t eliminate interest entirely. Any money you take out today will ultimately become more expensive to pay back as time marches on. When you do take out a loan, pay back what you can when you can, so if you can afford more than the minimum payments today, start paying off more so that you minimize interest even further.

The Health Benefits of Belgian Dark Chocolate

Belgian milk chocolate may be delicious, but if you really want to get any health benefits from your chocolate, you are going to want to start eating Belgian dark chocolate. There are actually quite a few different nutritional benefits offered by Belgian dark chocolate, but keep in mind that you will only reap these benefits if you eat the

Benefits

One of the greatest benefits of Belgian dark chocolate is that it is good for your heart. Just as you hear with drinking a glass of red wine a day, eating some Belgian dark chocolate a day can help to improve your heart and leave you in better overall health.

Belgian chocolate is made from plants, which means that it contains many of the health benefits of dark vegetables, which are plenty. These benefits are from flavonoids which act as antioxidants, and which work by protecting the body from free radicals. If you are not already aware, free radicals are potentially dangerous to the body, as they can cause damage that leads to heart disease.

Belgian dark chocolate is good for your heart and even just a small bar of it every day can help to keep your heart and cardiovascular system running well.

Belgian dark chocolate can also help to lower blood pressure, as studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate every day can help to reduce blood pressure in individuals with high blood pressure. As well it can help to lower cholesterol, the LDL cholesterol which is known as being the bad form of cholesterol.

These are just a few of the many different benefits that are offered not only by the Belgian chocolate but all dark chocolate, and so obviously it is going to be a great thing if you start eating it on a regular basis. Just keep in mind that you need to eat it in moderation if you want to reap any of the benefits, otherwise you will simply be consuming a ton of calories and the benefits that you will be getting will be paling in comparison and not worth it at all.

The Bad News

Carrying on from this, the bad news is that yes, chocolate does have a lot of fat and so you need to be careful in regards to the amount of it that you are eating. However, some of the fats found in chocolate do not impact your cholesterol, and this includes oleic acid, stearic acid, and palmitic acid.