If you pay attention to housing news, you’ve no doubt been hearing that interest rates are expected to rise slighting through the end of the year. Rising interest rates not only impact Atlanta real estate, but they impact nearly everything you buy on credit. You may feel like rising interest rates can only be a bad thing, but there is a silver lining to the rising-interest-rate cloud, as explained in the recent Equifax Finance blog article, “

Five Good Things About Rising Interest Rates.”

According to the article, rising rates can benefit you on a personal, financial level. Higher rates keep you from spending too much with credit. If you know you’ll pay more in interest, you may opt to just use cash.  Higher rates can also help you get your debt under control (by forcing you to put the brakes on taking on additional debt). Eventually, this will help paint a better picture of your financial situation and make you more attractive to lenders, especially when it comes time to secure a mortgage. Rising rates also increase the rate of return on your savings.

Interest rates have been at historic lows for the past few years, and it is very likely that they will continue to rise in the months to come. While no one knows how much and how quickly they will rise, you can see that there are some benefits to higher interest rates.

Learn more about interest rates, real estate, credit and more, all on the Equifax Finance blog, which also contains hundreds of articles on other personal-finance related topics, like retirement, taxes, insurance,

identity theft and more.