Well, I've had my DH home for the last few weeks and haven't been on the puter (he works on a boat). Very interesting to come back to see the resulting conversations!
We don't believe in debt. Period. However, because one upon a time credit became more and more available, and people relied more and more on debt, inflation grew and therefore, people would now be hard pressed to save up for a house in a LIFETIME of saving. And while we see that there might be a need for a good FICO score here and there, we also don't understand why businesses we work with refuse to look into our financial history further than gross income, assets, and FICO score (sometimes they'll actually look at the report...but that's typically just the large lenders.....what frustrates us more than anything is the utility companies and etc.....heaven forbid they call our last company and ask if we've been paying our bills on time for the last...ooohhhh....8 years, longer than we've been adults at any rate
).
We don't have a problem necessarily leveraging ourselves when needed. But our financial goal is to get my DH off the boats and home where we can have the freedom to work together in whatever we may choose.....something that maybe won't make him be gone from me 8 months a year would be great! lol
Unless he goes deep sea, he won't be making any more money (with the exception of the market going up occasionally and us getting pay raises that way). He's a chief engineer and won't ever move any higher up the ladder. BUt, needless to say, he makes a very good income. However, I must say that other than making sure you're debt to income ratio isn't over 28% + - ....companies don't put too much stock into what you make when lending. Remember, this is the age of the interest only loans!
No one cares what you make or what your history is with your money...as long as you can "make" the minimum monthly payments.
Our interest is high for the time period we bought. It could've been 2.5-3 points lower. Here's the reason for wanting our score higher, or our mortgage lower. We have currently 5500 a month that we put towards our mortgage. Right now, our mortgage, without ins and taxes, is 2150, of which 100 is going to principle this year. If we get a better rate...more or less prime....our payments would come down to about 1400-1500...which is an additional 600-700 a month we could put towards prinicple....or include our taxes and ins and not have to worry about those (which come out to about 600-700/month).
THis isn't in the interest of getting more debt or staying in debt. The whole point of us buying this house and paying on it like we have been and wanting to refi is to pay it off ASAP and move on with our freer lives.
April