If you’re like most Americans (or Canadians), you don’t passionately follow financial news. You’re not plugged into CNBC and The Wall Street Journal every day. C’mon, that stuff is pretty dull.
Speaking of financial news, here are a couple of dull, boring sentences that might mean a lot to your pocketbook: The Fed made an emergency cut in interest rates. Rates are at all all-time low.
So, what’s that mean for you? It affects your mortgage, your credit cards, your savings account and your student loans. Basically, it’s never been cheaper for you to borrow money.
“I’m telling people to take advantage of these rates and refinance their mortgages or their student loans,” says financial advisor Justin Chidester, owner of Wealth Mode Financial Planning in Logan, Utah. “I’m pretty much telling everyone, ‘Just go get a quote. It’s not going to hurt you to do that.’”
What exactly should you be doing now? We asked three financial planners, and here are five pieces of advice they gave us.
Conveniently, you can do all this stuff online. You don’t even have to leave your house.
1. Save Tens of Thousands of Dollars Buying a Home
If you’ve ever wanted to get a mortgage that you can actually afford, now could be the time.
“If you’re looking to buy a home, seize the day! Mortgage rates will likely come back up more quickly than we think, and you’re locking yourself into a loan for a long period of time,” says financial planner Karen Lee, president of Karen Lee & Associates in Atlanta, Georgia.
How much home can you afford? And how’s your credit? We know a place where you can check both of things for free.
Credit Sesame will show you your credit score and tell you how to improve it. Your credit score makes a huge difference in whether you can get a mortgage and how much interest you’ll have to pay on that mortgage.
Its website also has a page where you can plug in your financial information, and it’ll tell you how much house you can afford to buy.
Signing up is free, and it takes no more than 90 seconds.
2. Finally Pay Off Those Lingering Student Loans
Got student loans? You could probably be paying less interest on those. Refinancing them could help you pay off your debt faster and save you thousands of dollars in interest.
“If you’ve been in college recently, you’re probably coming out with rates in the high 6% or 7%, so you can usually refinance to private loans at a lower rate,” Chidester says.
With companies like Splash Financial, you can take steps to refinance your student loans in minutes. At first, it might sound like you’re just moving your debt around, but the key is to find a loan with better interest rates (Splash’s fixed-rate loans start as low as 3.48%) and/or lower monthly payments.
“Due to the rate cut, a 10-year fixed-rate student loan average is now around 4.70% and the five-year variable rate loan is averaging 4.03% — both down by double digits from rates in 2019,” Johndrow says.
Getting a free quote won’t hurt your credit score. All you have to do is enter some basic info. (This includes your Social Security number so Splash can check your credit, but the site is bank-level secured.)
If you have a credit score of 660 or higher and an annual income of at least $40,000, you should have a good chance of qualifying.
3. Earn More Money From Your Savings
Turnabout is fair play, and lower interest rates work the other way, too: You’re paying less interest to your lenders, but your bank is paying less interest to you.
Interest rates on savings accounts are dropping. And even if you have a savings account, chances are you weren’t earning much money from it, anyway.
“I always recommend looking at online savings accounts that are FDIC-insured as an alternative to your local brick-and-mortar bank,” Lee says. “They almost always pay 1% or more than traditional banks.”
These days, the average savings interest rate is limping along at a measly 0.09%, according to the FDIC. Deposit a hundred bucks, and you literally won’t earn a dime in a month’s time.
But with Credit Karma Savings, you’ll earn 1.80% interest. That’s more than 20 times the national average.
And unlike other savings accounts, Credit Karma doesn’t make you jump through hoops to collect interest. As long as you have at least 1 cent in your account, you’re good to go. Best yet: No fees. The account is completely free.
It takes no more than a few minutes to open an account. Then sit back and watch the money roll in.
4. Save Thousands of Dollars on Your Mortgage
Mortgage rates are at a 50-year low, so it’s worth thinking about refinancing. No joke: Over the life of a 30-year mortgage, a lower interest rate can potentially save you tens of thousands of dollars.
“If you can knock it down a half-percent, you should seriously consider it,” Chidester says. “If you can drop it a whole percentage point, I think it’s almost a no-brainer. If you think you’re going to move in the next five years, though, you need to look carefully at whether it’s really worth paying the closing costs.”
To get a quote on a mortgage refi, reach out to your lender, or shop your options online. With many online lenders, you can get a quote in a matter of minutes, and it shouldn’t hurt your credit score, either.
Don’t dawdle, though.
“As the demand for mortgage refinances increases, lenders may level-off their interest rates or even increase them because there isn’t enough supply to meet the demand. So it would be prudent to lock-in a lowered rate as soon as you can,” says Maggie Johndrow, a financial advisor with Johndrow Wealth Management in Hartford, Connecticut.
5. Get Rid of Your Expensive Credit Card Debt
One more thing: “As the Fed slashes rates, we’d also expect your credit card’s annual percentage rate (APR) to follow suit,” Johndrow says.
So you’ll be paying a little less interest on your credit card balance. The problem is, credit debt is still the most expensive kind of debt you can have. Your credit card companies are still getting rich off those interest charges.
“Get a personal loan to consolidate your credit card debt,” Chidester advises.
A company called Fiona can match you with a low-interest loan you can use to pay off every credit card balance you have. The benefit? You’re left with just one bill to pay every month, and because the interest rate is so much lower, you can get out of debt so much faster.
If your credit score is at least 620, Fiona can help you borrow up to $100,000 (no collateral needed) with fixed rates starting at 3.84% and terms from 24 to 84 months.
Fiona won’t make you stand in line or call a bank. And if you’re worried you won’t qualify, it’s free to check online. It takes two minutes, and it could save you thousands of dollars.
Totally worth it.
Mike Brassfield (mike@thepennyhoarder.com) is a senior writer at The Penny Hoarder. He actually follows financial news really closely.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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