Q: My husband and I live in the city, but we dream of quitting our 9-to-5 jobs and moving to the country. Do you have any advice?

A: Lots of people fantasize about leaving the rat race for a home in the country, but some have a better chance of successfully making such a move than others.

Sit down with your spouse and make a list of all the reasons why you would like to leave the Big City behind. If you simply want to escape a job that’s driving you crazy, you might be better off staying where you are now and looking for a new employer or even a new career. Your current lifestyle probably wouldn’t change much, and jobs in metro areas tend to pay much better than similar jobs in rural areas.

Some people who want to move to the country or a small town can find work more easily than others. For example, nurses and educators can often make the transition smoothly because their skills are in demand almost everywhere. Consultants, freelancers and people with certain types of home-based businesses also have an advantage because they can usually do their jobs anywhere that there’s a computer, phone, fax machine and modem.

Although the slower pace of country life certainly has its allure, it also has its drawbacks. Few rural areas have large cultural centers, a variety of good restaurants, entertainment hot spots, or even 24-hour convenience stores – just a handful of things that city-dwellers often take for granted. Country schools aren’t always the best, and large hospitals might be several miles away – two more important concerns for people who have children or serious medical problems.

Depending on how far out to the country you go, you also might face unpleasantries such as roads that become impassable during bad weather or wells that run dry for days or weeks at a time.

If you consider all these issues and still find country life appealing, take your time before making the move. Visit a few areas that you like in all four seasons of the year. Make friends with one or two realty agents in each area and get a mail subscription to its community newspaper so you can continue following local developments and real estate trends after you go back to your home in metropolis.

Most major bookstores stock lots of publications to help city slickers make a successful move to the countryside. Among the better ones are “Leaving the City: 101 Tips for Moving to the Country” by Jeanie Peck, and the older “Finding and Buying Your Place in the Country” by Les Scher and Carole Scher.

Q: Whatever happened to TRW, the big credit-reporting agency?

A: The company, which helped to revolutionize the credit-reporting industry a generation ago, was renamed Experian in 1996. Along with TransUnion LLC and Equifax Inc., Experian now provides nearly all of the reports that lenders across the nation use to help determine a borrower’s creditworthiness.

Though the company’s name was changed nearly 10 years ago, some mortgage brokers and lenders still (mistakenly) refer to any type of credit report as a “TRW” – as in, “Your application can’t be processed until we pull your TRW from the computer.”

Q: We took out our mortgage last year and now want to refinance into a lower-rate loan. However, our loan contract states that we would have to pay a penalty equal to six months’ worth of interest (about $5,900) if we refinance before our current mortgage turns three years old. Would refinancing now still make sense?

A: It depends. Paying a $5,900 prepayment penalty and other costs involved in refinancing now certainly wouldn’t make sense if you plan to move again soon, because your out-of-pocket expenses would far exceed the monthly savings you would enjoy from the new loan’s lower rate.

Conversely, if you plan to live in the same home for several more years, refinancing at a lower rate now would probably be wise because you’d keep the new mortgage long enough for its long-term monthly savings to offset both the new loan’s setup costs and the old loan’s prepayment penalty.

Before you refinance, contact your current lender to see if it will offer any financial incentives in order to keep your business. Some banks will waive or reduce their prepayment penalties or other costs for existing borrowers who want to refinance: They’d rather keep a good customer, even at a lower rate, than see the borrower jump to a competing lender.

– David W. Myers is a 20-year veteran of the newspaper and magazine business, having previously covered real estate for the Los Angeles Times and Investor’s Business Daily.