Mortgage

A home loan you use to buy a house.

It's a special type of loan for a number of reasons:

First, this type of loan doesn't count toward your credit score the way that credit card balances do. You can have a big mortgage and still have good credit (while having a big credit card limit is bad news for your credit score).

Second, home loans usually give you some tax breaks. Mortgages tend to have low interest rates, in part because The Man can take away your house if you don't pay up. There's little risk to the bank or lender because they know they can always take your house and sell it if you don't make good on the loan.

For most people, a mortgage is the largest debt they're ever going to take on.

For all the deets, head on over to our section on mortgages.