Yeah, good point about the CDs.
I did manage to find an online savings account that pays 5.1%, which is THISCLOSE to the APR on our house. Honestly, I don't think it's worth the trouble the more I think about it- we'd have to pay taxes on the savings interest, and we wouldn't save the interest that we are paying on the mortgage.
Our mortgage interest isn't all that much- last year it was $1800, and this year's total will be around $1200. 2012 it should be under $1000 for the whole year. But better to lower it than not.
Part of this is, I think, I psychological problem on my part. Our mortgage payment is so low that I'm kind of like, "Eh, so we get the house paid off, big deal, it's only $315 a month." Which sounds like a made up problem, I know, but our mortgage is the tip of the iceberg. Our taxes and interest are $135, and our utilities are another $315 per month. DSL, Hulu +/Netflix, home VOIP, and cell phone minutes, altogether, cost another $32/mo., so really our monthly household bills, even without having a car payment or consumer debt payments, exceed the amount of our mortgage, which is not the case for lots of folks and is the reverse of the way both DH and I grew up.
I guess this is what we get for buying a cheap house!
I think it's good, though, that our remaining mortgage is just about equal to DH's adjusted gross. It's easier to break it down and set the goal. I mean, if you figure that we are supposed to be paying 29% of our income on housing, that works out to being paid off in... why, look at that, just about 4 years.
Moving here really has been a blessing in a lot of ways, but this is not the place I want to be if TSHTF. We want to be on a small farm. We are very lucky that our SHTF scenarios don't include job loss- DH has rock solid job security. He'll retire from his current workplace, barring any zombpocalypse, doomsday peak oil scenarios. But if that happens, a job is the least of our worries.
We bought this house as a stepping stone, 6 months before the financial meltdown. We have managed to pay off our car and about $10,000 per year in student loans and old credit card debt. Now that that's all cleared up, I guess I'm just feeling rushed. We moved here 6 years ago, and still felt young. We are both in our early 30s now, and time is starting to move like the fast train to Memphis. We really want to get out of town before we are too much older, so that's why the thought of waiting for this house to sell after we've spent seven years paying it off kinda gives me itchy feet... which I just need to be an adult and cope with. It makes it harder when everyone is shouting at you, "But this is a GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!"
But I really do think that we could rent this house out very easily, and money's money. And we are in a special matched savings program, where we set aside $30 per month, and in three years we'll have $3000. Which is not a ton for a down payment, but if we get an FHA loan, we can borrow $125,000, and a 3.5% down payment on that is only $4500 (this is based solely on DH's current income). We could come up with that at the drop of hat, especially four years from now with a paid off house and fully funded matched savings. A $125,000 loan has a payment of about $650 per month, which is only about $50 more per month than what we thinking of renting this house for. So the economics work. I just need to buckle down and commit to burning the mortgage over the next four years.
And it does sound like your goals are in sight!
