FinFam

Refinancing is a pain. Credit checks. 30-day closing. $5,000+ in fees. All over again. But what if you could just... drop your rate? No new loan. No appraisal. Just a fee and an esignature. A growing number of lenders offer exactly this. It goes by many names. "Rate modification," "rate refresh," or "rate reset," etc. The secret? They're portfolio lenders, and they're almost all credit unions. They keep your #loan instead of selling it to Fannie Mae. Because they own it, they can adjust the terms. We found real examples and break down how to spot these lenders. https://lnkd.in/gUgE8RbH

The 15/15 ARM might be the best #mortgage you've never heard of. Fixed for 15 years. Adjusts ONCE. Fixed again for another 15. Most Americans move or refinance within 12 years. So for the vast majority of homeowners, a 15/15 ARM is functionally identical to a 30-year fixed. Except it typically comes with a rate ~20 basis points lower. The catch? It's almost exclusively a :credit union product, and fewer than 10% of them offer it. We break down the math and who's offering them in this post. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gSmr7whk

The Lazy Tax: Mortgage Edition. Our second post in our credit union mortgage series. This time we compared rates from 125+ credit unions against the Big Four banks: Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and US Bank. BLUF: Big banks averaged 30-50 basis points higher than credit unions. One bank was almost a full percentage point higher than the best CU. On a $500k mortgage, that's over $100k in extra interest over 30 years. Check out the infographic here: https://lnkd.in/gqwB4h2y We also get into why banks are so pricy. In short, marketing. When you see a Super Bowl ad or get glossy mailers, you're looking at why their rate is higher. Credit unions don't run national campaigns, and _some_ of them pass the savings to members. Our dashboard helps you find those institutions. No signup, no ads, no referral fees. #FinTech #RealEstate #Mortgages #CreditUnions #OpenData

Buying a home? Thinking about a refi? You might be about to pay a $50,000 "marketing tax" to a big lender. Analyzing public rates, we found big banks showing ~6.4% APR, while several credit unions showed 5.5%. That 0.9% difference on a typical loan isn't just a few dollars. It can be hundreds of dollars monthly, $50k+ over the life of the mortgage. To bring some transparency to this market, we built a tool that tracks daily mortgage rates from over 125 credit unions across the US. It helps you compare real-time rates against national benchmarks (FRED), plus find lenders you're actually eligible for. We're publishing this data for free. No referral fees, no signup, no ads. Just helping you shop with your eyes open. Check out the dashboard and see if you're paying the Lazy Tax: https://lnkd.in/gZAEnevT Early feedback has been so positive we're turning this into a blog post series all about credit union home lending. Be sure to subscribe to follow along. #FinTech #RealEstate #Mortgages #OpenData #FinancialPlanning

Tired of reading endless financial advice only to have to model it yourself in a spreadsheet? We agree. We envisioned FinFam as GitHub meets Substack, giving experts (and anyone with knowledge) a platform to model financial decisions directly. FinFam Views are how we share actionable, subscribable financial insights. The fun part? A View is nothing more than a standard XLSX spreadsheet. You can build an interactive web application using just Google Sheets (or Excel, etc.). And that's not all. Watch our new Quick Start Guide demo now to see how FinFam's AI agent drafts an actionable spreadsheet-driven web app from just a question pulled from Reddit. https://lnkd.in/gXYFUAAM #FinFam #FinTech #Spreadsheets #FinancialPlanning #OpenSource #Expertise #Collaboration

40% of Gen Z gets financial advice from social media instead of banks. 85% won't even apply for a job without a salary listed. So where are the collaborative, transparent financial planning products? Today, FinFam launches in public beta as the first collaborative financial planning platform. We wanted financial planning that worked like GitHub, but looked like Notion. Our novel approach turns the finance industry's favorite format, spreadsheets, into shareable, interactive financial apps that answer your specific questions, enhanced by AI that understands your family's context. The timing couldn't be more critical. The Great Wealth Transfer has Millennials and Gen Z inheriting $50 trillion over the next decade. FinFam aims to be the platform that lets you plan like it's 2025. 📹 3 minute demo: https://lnkd.in/g2mfquRt 🔗 Try it now: https://finfam.app 🚀 Upvote us on Product Hunt: https://lnkd.in/gN-na6m8 #GenZ #GreatWealthTransfer #AI #PersonalFinance #Collaboration #BuildInPublic