Highest and best use of your money

So a lot of customers come to me asking for a rate. oh and by the way they dont want any of that pesky mortgage insurance even though they may not have a 20% down payment.
Well condsider this. Say you think that you would like to put down 10% (which will incur some type of mortgage insurance) and it will pretty much clean out your savings account. But you figure that you will be much better off interest rate wise overall than if you put less down.
Interestingly enough, FHA is a great alternative. You only put down a minimum of 3.5% of the purchase price. However, the interest rates will often be as much as 0.5% better than a conventional mortgage with the above scenario.
But better than that, you have left some money in the bank for those odd emergencies that can crop up without increasing your monthly mortgage payments by a huge amount. Or perhaps you have a credit card that is charging a large amount of monthly interest that would be better paid off, than putting the money into the down payment.
Food for thought!!!