For some would-be buyers and refinancers, today’s mortgage rates are the ultimate tease. While ads tout the lowest rates in history (recently under 4% for a 30-year fixed), qualifying for a mortgage that cheap can be an exercise in frustration or futility.

Less-than-perfect credit will hurt, of course, but you may also find yourself struggling if your situation is deemed at all unusual — which could mean anything from owning a business to buying a condo instead of a single-family home. Read on for the best ways to get a deal.

Problem: You’re self-employed.

Solution: Give up deductions.

Business may be booming, but don’t expect the bank to take your word for it. If you haven’t run your own shop for at least two years, you probably can’t get a loan.

Assuming you meet that hurdle, banks will use the average income on your past two tax returns or the most recent, whichever is lower, when determining the amount you can borrow and the rate on your loan.

To read the full story: CNN Money

Some tax breaks are available to just about anybody — regardless of income.

If you’re a high-income type, you’re probably painfully aware that some tax breaks are phased out (either reduced or eliminated) as your adjusted gross income, or AGI, increases. That’s the price of success, right? Well, not necessarily. Believe it or not, some tax breaks are available to just about anybody — regardless of income. Here are six of them.

If you’re self-employed, you may be able to contribute and deduct up to $49,000 for 2011 and up to $50,000 for 2012 by setting up a simplified employee pension, or SEP. Contributing to a SEP could dramatically reduce your taxable income and save you a bundle. Think you’ve already missed the boat for your 2011 taxes? Think again. If you don’t already have a retirement plan in place, you can still set up a SEP and make a deductible contribution to your account for 2011. And that could be done as late as Oct. 15 of this year if you extend your 2011 return for the automatic six-month period.

To read the full story: Yahoo Finance

Your credit score is like a movie: the image is constantly changing.

Your score, which lenders use to assess your bill-paying ability, is in a constant state of flux and will vary from one credit bureau to the next, meaning you don’t have one credit score, but many.

“Your score can be updated every time there’s a new piece of information,” said Sarah Davies, senior vice president of analytics at VantageScore Solutions LLC. VantageScore is a credit-score model created by the three major credit-reporting bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, which also use the FICO score created by Fair Isaac Co.

Roughly 70% of credit scores change by up to 20 points in a 90-day window, according to VantageScore. Consider your score a reflection of your credit behavior at a particular moment in time.

“You could do something every other day, like pay a bill or miss a payment, and it might change every other day,” she said. “The reality is a lot of those updates are insignificant.”

Your score is mostly determined by how promptly you pay your bills and what kind of debt you carry, though other factors also feed into it. For example, a mortgage holds more weight in the scoring system than a handful of retail accounts, so timely mortgage payments are more important. A car loan, which also carries more heft than a retail card, can be a big help in building a promising credit history.

To read the full story: Daily Finance

Millions of homeowners have garnered huge savings in recent years from one simple move: refinancing their mortgages. Now, the refinancing craze has spread to an unexpected industry: car loans.

Plunging interest rates have been bad news for savers, but borrowers couldn’t be happier. Mortgage rates have dropped around 3 percentage points from their levels just four years ago. That has translated into hundreds or even thousands of dollars in monthly savings on mortgages.

But the idea of refinancing a car loan never even occurs to many borrowers. After all, with many owners choosing to buy new vehicles even before their loans are paid off, it’s often easier just to take advantage of financing deals from new-car dealers. Moreover, cars typically lose their value so quickly that the loans turn upside down — meaning that the outstanding loan is more than the car is worth, making refinancing a tough proposition.

To read the full story: Daily Finance

About 37% of business owners are using credit to cover some of their costs, reports the National Small Business Association. The optimal card for your operation depends on how you’ll use it.

Rate should be your primary concern, says Beverly Harzog of Credit.com. APRs on business cards average slightly lower than personal cards (13% vs. 14%), but you can do better with the latter if you have an excellent credit score.

More important, personal card issuers must abide by the CARD Act, which protects you from arbitrary rate hikes.

To read the full story: CNN Money

Intense customer backlash over new bank fees has led some big financial institutions to backpedal on them in recent months, but at least one is ushering in new charges guaranteed to be unpopular with customers.

Wells Fargo (WFC) stopped offering free checking to new customers in 2010: Now, it’s introducing a $7 monthly charge in six (thus far, unidentified) states for customers who had opened free checking accounts before the cutoff.
The new fees will kick in May 4.

There are ways around the fee. Customers who maintain a minimum daily balance of $1,500 or have direct deposits of $500 or more going into their accounts each month won’t be hit with the $7 fee. If a customer below those thresholds is willing to receive online statements instead of monthly mailings, the $7 monthly charge will be reduced to $5.

The ultimate avoidance mechanism, of course, is to leave your bank if it introduces new fees. However, this is a copycat industry. If a major institution is making money in a new way, you can be sure that rivals will follow.

To read the full story: Daily Finance

Starbucks unveiled its own single-cup home-brewing machine Thursday, sending shares of competitor Green Mountain Coffee Roasters reeling in after-hours trading.

Starbucks will begin selling its “Verismo” machine this fall, the company said in a statement, which did not offer pricing information.

Green Mountain currently dominates the single-serve market with its popular Keurig, or K-Cup, machines.

Last year, the two companies announced a deal allowing Green Mountain to produce K-Cup versions of Starbucks coffees and Tazo teas. With the Verismo, however, Starbucks is moving into single-cup brewing for itself, partnering with Germany-based Krueger GmbH & Co. KG to produce the machine.

“The premium single-cup segment is the fastest-growing business within the global coffee industry,” Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said in a statement.

To read the full story: CNN Money

Given all of the hype ahead of Wednesday’s iPad unveiling, it’s surprising to see how right the leading analysts and tech bloggers were in nailing Apple’s (AAPL) new iPad.

Yes, it will have a speedy quad-core processor. The beefed-up retina display means that there are 3.1 million pixels on the device — or a million more pixels than standard HDTV. The data storage capacities remain the same, and thankfully at the same price points.

This doesn’t mean there weren’t a few surprises out of the Cupertino company. Let’s go over five somewhat unexpected developments.

To read the full story:  Daily Finance

Wells Fargo will roll out a $7 monthly checking account fee to customers in six more states starting in May. Customers who agree to receive online bank statements will pay a $5 fee.

The states are Georgia, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, where Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia branches last year.

Wells Fargo (WFC) stopped offering free checking to new customers in 2010 and began charging a similar fee to existing customers in 23 states at the beginning of 2011. The bank has branches in 39 states.

Customers who meet certain criteria, such as having monthly direct deposits of at least $500 or maintaining a minimum balance of $1,500, will qualify for a fee waiver. The company believes the majority of its customers qualify to avoid the new monthly fee, says spokeswoman Lisa Westermann.

Banks have been experimenting with new charges in response to a regulation that slashed the fees they can charge retailers when consumers use debit cards. Consumers have fought back, though, causing Bank of America, Wells Fargo and others to rescind monthly debit card fees.

To read the full story: USA Today

The PC business might just brush itself off and stare down Apple’s iPad next year.

PC shipments worldwide — expected to grow 4.4% this year — will jump 10% in 2013, according to market researcher Gartner.

Powering that uptick will be a new wave of slim laptops known as ultrabooks and the expected 2012 launch of Microsoft’s Windows 8, Gartner says.

PC shipments worldwide will climb from 368 million units this year to more than 400 million in 2013, Gartner says.

That upbeat outlook for the PC market comes one day after Apple on Wednesday unveiled its third-generation iPad, which is expected to propel the Mac maker to new heights.

“The bar has been set pretty high around Apple,” says Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal. “That’s a high bar that the PC market now has to reach.”

Apple sold 15.4 million iPads in its most recent quarter.

To read the full story: USA Today