If you're about to buy and finance a home, looking at getting a home equity line of credit or maybe refinancing your existing mortgage. It just got a little more expensive. And let's not forget about credit cards, auto loans and the like.  Freddie Mac conducts a weekly mortgage rate survey and is released every Thursday. The most recent results reported the average 30 year rate popped to 4.16%, this highest rate since almost three years ago. This is also 1.07% higher compared to one year ago. So what does this mean?

The first, albeit obvious, result is credit simply costs more. You recall the Fed just increased the Federal Funds Rate, and subsequently, the Discount Rate followed by 0.25%. At first glance, that really doesn't seem to be a big jump and in the grand rate scheme, it's really not. However, for those potential borrowers who are cutting it close as it relates to qualifying, it could very well mean not qualifying for the home loan they want after all.

Why the rate bump? In short, to help stave off the throes of inflation. Inflation is essentially a tax in that it raises the cost of borrowing that is completely out of the borrower's control. And while the Fed Funds Rate increase doesn't directly affect your standard 30-year fixed-rate, indirectly it certainly does.

This rate is the increases the interest rate banks can charge one another for short term, as in overnight, rates that banks can charge one another for overnight lending to meet reserve requirements. This rate increase increases the cost of funds for banks who then must charge its customers with a similar increase.

If you look at the 0.25% rate increase by itself, it's not that big of a deal but the Fed also stated we can expect another six potential interest rate moves...before the end of the year. That's over the next nine months, folks. And that's a lot.

With these rate increases, we can also expect the economy to slow down. That's really the impact of such rate moves. Higher rates will stymie borrowing to a certain extent and with rates potentially 2.00% higher in such a relatively short term the impact will be felt sooner rather than later.

For those refinancing, you can expect not just higher rates but also slower approval times. Borrowers may be racing against the clock for the next rate hike so lenders may be flooded with applications. With this in mind, it's important to speak with your loan officer about how to lock in mortgage rates in order to avoid future rate increases. And finally, for those holding on to to the notion that rates will soon drop lower, I'm afraid that ship has left the harbor. At least for the near term.

Remember, lots of things beyond the government or Fed Reserve's are beyond their control. And inflation is one of them. Hold on. This might get a little choppy.