We bought our house nearly 5 years ago for ~$149k. At it's peak during 2007, the houses in my immediate neighborhood were appraising for $240k. We're now appraising ~$190k. Anyway, when we bought we did an 80-15-5% loan, meaning we had a first mortgage that covered 80% of the cost of the house (5.5% interest rate), a second mortgage that covered 15% (something like 9% interest), and we put down 5%. This breakdown meant we didn't have to pay mortgage insurance (PMI). The second mortgage wasn't really interest only, but the rate was high enough and the payment low enough that we wouldn't actually pay it off when it became due in 20 years.
We only owe about $131k on our house so we wanted to consolidate our two mortgages and see what kind of interest rate we could get. How's 4.875% sound??? We took the bait and finished our refinance today. If we simply continue paying what we do now, we'll pay off our new loan in 21 years -- all without impacting our budget. Now, if we pay every 2 weeks instead of monthly, then the loan goes bye-bye much faster. And if we allocate more $$ to my mortgage as my salary increases, it goes bye-bye even faster still. Love it!
Tonight for our combined activity we had a food drive where the youth went door-to-door to every home in our ward boundary. This is an annual event in our ward; the youth collect it for their Nov. combined activity and the Elders and High Priests deliver the food the next night. The ward welfare committee decided that 21 families this year in our ward that needed the food. 21! That sounds like a lot to me. We collected hundreds of pounds of food tonight, including 17 frozen turkeys. The ward will purchase the remaining turkeys needed. This is good for the youth and it's service they seem to actually enjoy.
4 comments:
That's a nice interest rate! Great job! We've been wondering if we should look into doing the same thing, but we'd have to make sure the cost of the refi is money we'd make back in a year. Who knows how long we'll be out here, so is it worth it?
Great interest rate, ours is 5.50% and we have 23 years left, I would love to save even more.
Usually if you save more than a point in interest you make your money back within a year. I'm going to look for a 4.5% and see if we can save even more.
Great service project. So sad that 21 families are in need, hopefully that will decrease soon.
That is great. We would love to move to Colorado, find a house and have a huge chunk to go towards a down payment, then pay it off before we move again.
That house stuff sounds great. Just paying a little extra each time does wonders. Remember the extra goes one hundred percent on principle. It will make a huge difference in time. Even ten dollars a month will make an enormous difference.
I do not get your title.
Dad Clark
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