Yep, some of 40 year mortgages currently being handed out will simultaneously go over the hill and expire sometime around 2048. And what do 40 year mortgage holders save over a 30 year? Not a lot. You’re saving $100 a month on a $200,000 loan. It’s not like the difference between a 5 and 10 year mortgage or even a 10 and 30 year. My Money Blog charted up the numbers:

Source: My Money Blog

I’m not saying what kind of mortgage people should or shouldn’t get, I’m just saying that 40 year mortgages usually seem unwise to me.

Seriously - a 30 year was recently over 6% (up from 4.25% a month ago) and rates are changing every day. It’s not as dramatic, but you could also say that the 30 year rate is slightly higher than it was in December or lower than it was in August. (OK, so rates have dropped some since then).

(what, did you expect a picture of girls in bikinis?) Source: BankRate.com.

So you might ask yourself “how much house can I afford today?” or “What would the monthly cost be on this house?” And now you have answers: there is now a mortgage calculator built into every property listing. See it? It’s right below the price. If you click on it, you can change your interest rate (like if you have bad credit or still have a lot of payments on your Porsche) or try it with a different down payment.

Click on this sucker to change your parameters (not here - when you’re viewing a listing like this one in Redmond):

Once you’ve popped it open, change your rate, your downpayment, or put in a monthly payment to see your downpayment:

If you want to get all deep on some wacky non-standard mortgage, this won’t quite cut it for you. If you can recommend a good tool for non-standard mortgages, give us a shout out in the comments.

If you aren’t asking yourself “how much house can I afford?” You may be asking yourself “How did I get here?”

Here is an illustrated answer (with some strong language):

Here is the talking heads sympathizing with you: