House Mortgage -- Countdown

[Eagle]

Mortgage Principle: $92,270.31

Not a lot of progress but some.

Congrats to all on the thread who've reached their goals! Wow a lot has happened since I posted an update.

We finally got under 90k. Mortgage Principle: $89,511.04

Another kiddo on the way so I'm sure this year will be slow as well. But progress is progress. Thankful for my wife and kids. Thankful for our home and paid off vehicles. Thankful for a good job and investments. Lot's to be thankful for.

[Gailete]

Congrats on the new little one that is coming. Children can be and should be our most precious inheritance.

[Randomsaver]

Congrats to all on the thread who've reached their goals! Wow a lot has happened since I posted an update.

We finally got under 90k. Mortgage Principle: $89,511.04

Another kiddo on the way so I'm sure this year will be slow as well. But progress is progress. Thankful for my wife and kids. Thankful for our home and paid off vehicles. Thankful for a good job and investments. Lot's to be thankful for.

Miss you man, welcome back!

As Gailette mentioned, congrats on the new kiddo.

[Mandy63]

I love the positivity and support in this thread. We finally made it under $200k with our mortgage. We have really been working on cutting cost--we canceled some subscriptions we don't use and closed our storage unit--to be able to put more towards the house but with 5 people we are running out of room. Contemplating putting it in savings to be able to put more towards a down payment and moving.

[greenskeeper]

$2700 additional principal for June (equivalent to 5 additional payments knocked out)

[Gailete]

Yesterday my hubby finished a job he had been working on that he had started a few weeks ago. usually these jobs net us about $2-300 and maybe $400 if we are lucky. He hadn't told me what he would be making so all I was expecting was the usual until he started handing me stacks of money last night. Too bad we are self-employed and have to stash away 30% of all earnings plus our sales tax, but we still had some significant cash.

I paid off, in full, our smallest credit card payment. It was only a zero % rate for a couple more months, but it feels good to have one more gone and can send that money to the other ones. Then I had enough to put a big chunk on two other credit cards. One taking it back to a zero % rate until 9-18, so the more I can dump on it over the next few months the better.

I was a happy camper for sure That is two credit cards and the car paid off all in the last five months! Celebrating with the smallest weight, thus cheapest, T-bone steaks I could find at the store today.

[Randomsaver]

I was a happy camper for sure That is two credit cards and the car paid off all in the last five months! Celebrating with the smallest weight, thus cheapest, T-bone steaks I could find at the store today.

Rewarding one's self for hitting certain goals is key to a financial plan. Enjoy the T-Bone Steaks Gailete!

[Randomsaver]

I love the positivity and support in this thread. We finally made it under $200k with our mortgage. We have really been working on cutting cost--we canceled some subscriptions we don't use and closed our storage unit--to be able to put more towards the house but with 5 people we are running out of room. Contemplating putting it in savings to be able to put more towards a down payment and moving.

Hi Mandy63, welcome to the thread!

Congrats on getting it down cross the 200K mark.

I think it is a good idea to save the money for downpayment if you plan to move to a bigger house. That way your base of interest of that mortgage will be less.

[Gailete]

Hi Mandy63, welcome to the thread!

Congrats on getting it down cross the 200K mark.

I think it is a good idea to save the money for downpayment if you plan to move to a bigger house. That way your base of interest of that mortgage will be less.

There is even more incentive to get a 20% down payment, something a lot of folks think they can't save up for any more. Doing so saves you oodles of dollars in the PMI which is money you must pay and it gets you nothing. You are buying insurance for the bank. It doesn't help with your equity at all.

When I bought a house right at the time I had met my husband (he actually looked through the house with me to be sure it was sound and at that point, I had only known him for a week or two), and then when we got married he came and lived with me there until our house was finished (he built it), so about 5 years we were there paying on that mortgage. I put down a 10% down payment on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage. I was having to pay the PMI. I kept a close eye on it because of an article I had read. The month it was paid off (we had hit 20% equity) I went to the bank and asked them to remove it. It took a month or two and I had to keep paying it until it was dropped. Banks are supposed to delete the PMI, but unless things have changed, they can take their good old time about which, depending on the amount of your PMI can cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Unless, when you know via your amortization schedule or mortgage statement you are at 20% of the total amount of the house, you ask the bank to remove it. It will and can take the bank months to get around to doing so and it will cost you. To get your PMI dropped the fastest you must tell the bank to do it or sit back and wait for them to get around to doing it which could take even more months and cost you many more dollars. This might have changed in the last 10 years, but I haven't heard about it.

I find it interesting that so many don’t think they can save up that 20% anymore, many or our parents and others just one or more generations removed, did this routinely. Generally, they never ended up underwater with their mortgage. They were frugal enough to not want to pay money for something that gave them no value. Why did I buy a house with a 10% DP? Simple. I was living in an apartment that was on one floor (I was already at the point I could barely do stairs) that was costing me around $900/month and the cost went up every year. The house I bought was around $600 including the PMI. I was saving about $3600 a year just on rent/mortgage expense every year, got a tax deduction for the mortgage and property taxes. And a place where the landlord couldn’t tell me what I could or couldn’t do in my place. So, at times it is worth the cost to get into a house without an appropriate down payment. It is frightening to see people getting 99% mortgages however!

[Randomsaver]

It is frightening to see people getting 99% mortgages however!

I was one of those guys. I went with 3% DP only. I didn't know the math yet. All I was thinking at the time was I don't want to sign another rent contract for a year because my supposed savings for DP are all just going to the landlord.

[Randomsaver]

Mortgage Principal : $103K

A nice tap on all your backs for completing payments for the First Half of 2017!

Congratulations to us all!

Mortgage Principal : $97K

[markr867]

Just made our second mortgage payment! The spreadsheet I found reduces the number of payments as we pay extra, so I'll keep track of that here We've paid extra each month so far, which has reduced our payments from 360 to 358.

June 2017
Mortgage payment: #2 of 358
Extra applied to principal: $574.66
Ending balance: $302,258.70

[Randomsaver]

Just made our second mortgage payment! The spreadsheet I found reduces the number of payments as we pay extra, so I'll keep track of that here We've paid extra each month so far, which has reduced our payments from 360 to 358.

June 2017
Mortgage payment: #2 of 358
Extra applied to principal: $574.66
Ending balance: $302,258.70

''

Great ! Keep it down!

[LivingAlmostLarge]

we are back in debt with a mortgage. 360 payments. My goal is to have it paid off the day we want to retire. If we cashed everything out right from retirement and investments we could pay it off. But the purpose isn't to touch our retirement. We need to be able to pay it off with our taxable accounts comfortably. Right now we are at around 19.9% of our mortgage in our taxable accounts after taxes.

Let's see how long this takes.

[Gailete]

I suspect that it won't take you anything like 360 months to pay off.! Keep us updated!