I use this method to determine whether paying down the mortgage or not. Let's say the mortgage rate is 4% for 30 years. The question is whether you can make more than 4% annual return on your investment. If the answer is YES, then don't pay down your mortgage. Let's say your investment return is 6%, then 4% goes to the mortgage and you have 2% gain after that. Actually, your mortgage rate could be lower if you have itemized your tax return, so your effective mortgage rate could be around 3%. With current inflation rate around 2%, you are paying the mortgage with the depreciated dollar. At today's economy and market condition, I will not pay down the mortgage since I can make more in the market. I could think of one scenario that I will say to pay down your primary residence's mortgage. If you have rental properties and they generate steady rental income gain year over year, then you might want to think about us...
To create a digital signature, signing software, such as an email program, is used to provide a one-way hash of the electronic data to be signed. A hash is a fixed-length string of letters and numbers generated by an algorithm. The digital signature creator's private key is then used to encrypt the hash. The encrypted hash -- along with other information, such as the hashing algorithm -- is the digital signature. The reason for encrypting the hash instead of the entire message or document is a hash function can convert an arbitrary input into a fixed-length value, which is usually much shorter. This saves time as hashing is much faster than signing. The value of a hash is unique to the hashed data. Any change in the data, even a change in a single character, will result in a different value. This attribute enables others to use the signer's public key to decrypt the hash to validate the integrity of the data. If the decrypted hash matches a second computed...