More mortgages are now available with lower deposits (higher loan-to-value) than a few months ago, and some lenders are prepared to risk more with first time buyers. All of this is good news if you are looking to buy a house, and although prices have recently fallen slightly, the overall trend is still for prices to increase. Increased mortgage availability should help more buyers into the market, increasing demand and pushing prices up.

But a note of caution – with house prices returning to the value current occupants bought at, more and more owners will feel ready to sell up – more houses on the market increases supply and therefore lowers the price. Some analysts think that this effect will start to work harder against the increasing demand, slowing growth in house prices, but not actually pushing prices back down.

If you have multiple debts, like credit card balances, overdrafts, car loans or store cards, it can be difficult to keep track of them all and to make sure you make the right payment each month. Some of these debts may have high interest rates which mean it will take you even longer to pay them all off. A debt consolidation loan is designed to put all of those debts into one overall debt, with one interest rate, and one monthly payment. If the interest rate is low enough, your total monthly payment can be lower than it was when you were paying separately. How low does that interest rate have to be? The Debt Consolidation Calculator can help you work that out.

Enter the details of your outstanding debts, like the amount you owe and the interest rate you’re paying on each debt. Then choose how quickly you’d like to pay them all off, and click “Go!”. The calculator will work out what your total monthly payment would be if you were to pay them all off individually – and also the overall interest rate you’re paying. This means that if you can get a debt consolidation loan at a lower interest rate, it would save you money each month (please note this does not include any charges the loan company may apply).

There are other things to consider, so before finding and using a debt consolidation loan, talk to an expert advisor like those at thinkmoney. Their website has plenty of useful information like debt consolidation pros and cons, and the first consultation with them is free. With a bit of help, you could save yourself a lot of money!

It might be time to look for a new job – the Christmas break gives one time to consider career plans, and you might think that in January you’ll start looking for new employment, or talk to your employer about a promotion. Use The Salary Calculator when comparing salaries so you know how much extra it would make to you each month if you got that pay rise.

If you need some extra money each month, to save up for a holiday or a new car say, then use the Required Salary Calculator to work out what salary you need to look for to get that extra take-home. There’s hope that early in 2010 we’ll hear that the UK has finally left recession and things will start to pick up – including the job market.

If you’re not interested in a new job, you can consider sorting out your finances. Use the Mortgage Repayment Calculator to get an idea of the effects of remortgaging in 2010, or the Debt Consolidation Calculator to see what you could save by taking control of all of your loans. Why not try to get debt free in 2010?

Here’s to a great new year for everyone, I hope that The Salary Calculator will help you with your money in 2010!

The proposals seem to be designed to protect the borrower, by making it the responsibility of lenders and mortgage advisers to check that the mortgage is indeed affordable. There are proposals to prevent lenders charging the borrower for being in arrears, as long as the borrower is trying to reduce those arrears. However, as the BBC are reporting, there are fears that these measures would make it even harder for people to get a mortgage as lenders (who are already limiting the mortgage options available and the ease with which they can be taken) will insist of tough checks to make sure that the applicants really can afford the repayments.

Some commentators think that this might hurt the housing market, which currently needs all the help it can get, because it will mean fewer people buying houses. However, we should bear in mind that at this stage they are only proposals by the FSA, they may be modified or relaxed before they are introduced, and they are unlikely to take effect for 12 months or more. We may find, therefore, that a number of borrowers will try to take mortgages out before the new rules come in and lenders may be tempted to take advantage of this crowd by offering more and better deals. It’s not all bad news for those looking for a new mortgage, and we may see that this helps (in the short term) both house prices and the mortgage market. Long term, the reason behind the proposals is to make house prices and the market in general more stable, instead of the boom and bust that we have seen in recent years. This will mean house prices are unlikely to increase at the rate they did in the mid-2000s, but should manage a steady climb that is more reassuring for borrowers and lenders alike.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean very much for you and me. After a couple of quarters of stable growth, we should see loans and mortgages get easier to come by and unemployment start to fall – but right now I’m afraid that even if our economy stabilises or starts to grow again it will be very cautiously.

A couple of notes of caution, however, before we start celebrating the recovery of the housing market and the economy as a whole. Firstly, as you can see from the chart in the BBC article, house prices are also tracked by The Halifax and they have yet to release their results for July. Their June figures were noticeably less positive than those from The Nationwide and so perhaps they will not show the same improvement in July. Secondly, it is unlikely that this rate of growth can continue. Although the housing market is recovering, the economy is much worse than it was 2 years ago, the last time we had growth like this – there are fewer people working and less money available for house purchases. After the initial “correction”, we should see the prices increase at a lower rate.

And this could be no bad thing – after all, one of the largest causes of the current economic climate was the “house price bubble”, hopefully we have all learned our lesson (I’m including lenders and borrowers in that statement) and will take things slower from now on. Lenders are reticent to lend their money to high-risk borrowers, having been stung recently, and if they are properly regulated it should help stop people from being tempted into buying something they can’t afford. These two further articles from the BBC tell us that lenders are relaxing a bit and allowing more mortgages to be taken out – which means more house sales, which increases demand and therefore the price of houses. When we get the right balance between lending to no one and lending to everyone, we should see stable growth in the housing market (which is a good foundation stone for economic recovery).

We may get out of this mess yet.