Give accurate information on the mortgage calculator and assess carefully whether a home equity loan is a better idea in your circumstances than refinancing your home. By refinancing you will be paying longer, but lower monthly payments will allow you to still enjoy life while creating the cash bonus you need.

Are you ready for a reverse mortgage? If you are of retirement age -- that is around the age of 65 -- and need to find an additional source of income, then a reverse mortgage is certainly worth exploring.

A reverse mortgage is a perfect way of ensuring that you can enjoy your retirement living in the home you raised your family. A reverse mortgage calculator will show you how much you can expect and give you the confidence of knowing you have this additional finance to draw on.

It is well worth your time to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of a reverse mortgage against those of a equity loan. A mortgage calculator is great tool to help you with deciding which option is best for you.

Another related issue is that being a private mortgage lender and investing your capital in other people's mortgages can be a very satisfying as well as profitable business.

However, investing your capital can also be tricky and fraught with risk. You can reduce that risk greatly by using special mortgage calculators to develop "what if" scenarios.

For example, when you start to look at a foreclosure loss type of mortgage calculator, then things are not going so well, and your investment is in jeopardy.

Unless you allow the mortgage to go into too much arrears before foreclosure, you should still make a profit on it. By using a mortgage calculator that calculates many variables you can ensure that you don't lose too many months of interest and therefore accrue less profit.

If your investment does pay off, however, should you continue to invest your capital or prepay your mortgage?

Figuring out whether to invest or to pay down debts is tricky. A mortgage calculator can show you how much your monthly payments would change if you replaced several debts with either a home equity loan or a new mortgage. If you have a large amount of debt, then refinancing to get control of debt should probably be your first move.

Whichever way you look at it, using your capital in some form of investment account or as prepayment against your mortgage, you are putting your money to work.

A mortgage calculator, specifically a prepayment versus investment calculator, will help you decide which method works most efficiently for your situation.