I Cut my mortgage by 10.5 years and saved $67,500 in interest

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by Gailete

Why would you consider buying a home in this market for only 4.5 years?

I agree. I'm not sure why anyone would buy a home for that short a time. You blow money on interest, closing costs, selling expenses, inspections, commissions, etc. You also take the risk that you'll get stuck with some costly repair that you'll never recoup the value of. For that short a period, I would definitely rent.

[aida2003]

Originally Posted by b4freedom

For those of you who don't have a 529 and don't have any college savings, I'd suggest you look at upromise.com. Although you may not want to open their 529 plan, you'll definitely want to sign up to get the "free" money. My 2 1/2-year-old son's 529 plan is over $2k from just money saved from this site.

Well, I've heard of Upromise and some other company that offers a similar program. However, IMO such accumulation success of "FREE $$" depends on a family's spending habits. Could you share how you managed to 'earn' the $2k in Upromise?
I know that you can ask grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. to sign up with Upromise using your child's name as a beneficiary and that way the Upromise program is great, but in our case we're alone in this country (our families live in Europe) and we don't spend a lot. These were the primary reasons why we did not start the hassle with the program.

Our help to our kids will come from the cash flow (work income, taxable investments, maybe help from granny??) at the time when/if our kids opt to go to college.

[disneysteve]

Originally Posted by aida2003

Well, I've heard of Upromise and some other company that offers a similar program. However, IMO such accumulation success of "FREE $$" depends on a family's spending habits.

I agree. I signed up for Upromise in May 2003 and linked everything we could link to it. In all that time, we've earned $34.93 from them. Apparently, we just don't do the right kind of shopping or buy the right brands to rack up significant rebates.

[noppenbd]

Originally Posted by disneysteve

I agree. I signed up for Upromise in May 2003 and linked everything we could link to it. In all that time, we've earned $34.93 from them. Apparently, we just don't do the right kind of shopping or buy the right brands to rack up significant rebates.

We have had the same experience. I have compared the prices when shopping through their site and at least for hotel rooms and rental cars the price you get through the upromise site is artificially inflated compared to other discount sites.