I live, write, and garden in the PNW with my husband of 28 years, disabled daughter, adult son, and my 84-year-old mother. We have paid off $250,000.00 worth of debt (if you include the interest) in the last fifteen years and as of 6/12/2020 are 100% DEBT FREE!!!!Today has just gone by very slowly. It is a no spend day, which is always good. DH let me sleep in so I didn't eat breakfast. Lunch was cheap and easy, homemade 100% whole wheat and egg spaghetti noodles, sauce, and cheap ground beef from a 98 cents a pound sale (first one in ages that was that low). We have a tub of garlic butter in the fridge so we use it on toast to make our own garlic bread. Added a salad of lettuce, cukes, and kohlrabi. Yummy, yummy. I love my pasta maker.
Dinner is very light tonight after that heavy of a lunch. Just canned tuna, a hard boiled egg, mayo mixed together and stuffed in celery. Repeat 3 times for four people.
Tomorrow while the kids are at school we are going to go look at dryers. I won't do it with them, they'd drive me crazy when I was trying to read the info on each machine. They are both going through an annoyance phase. As in lets see what we can do to annoy each other the most so that Mom and Dad get mad. Hope it passes soon. Oh, and Rose has picked up the lovely habit of rolling her eyes. I'm considering charging her 25 cents from her allowance each time she does it.
Not much going on. Kind of a boring day.
Slow Kind of Day
March 5th, 2007 at 03:34 am
March 5th, 2007 at 05:44 pm 1173116643
1) You talk about paying extra on your mortgage. The immediate question that comes to my mind is "why"? I'm guessing your mortgage interest is the lowest you've got (versus credit cards for example), and you get the tax deductions to boot. However, I couldn't find what the terms your current mortgages are (how long, rate, etc.)
2) Similarly, you had mentioned purchasing a new car...again, I have no idea how many you have, how old / miles, and what your current payment (if any) or financing terms (how long / rate) are.
3) 401(k). I gather you are contributing 3% and there is some employer match. What is unclear to me is how much they match and up to what percentage? (ex: 100% match up to 6%)
4) Revolving Debt - I see the amounts and some mention about different terms, etc...but can't get a detailed accounting to understand exactly what you have and what your options are.
Again, I've just become a bit interested and wanted to see if I might offer some additional suggestions / thoughts. However, I also recognize you may not really be looking for that or want to divulge your financial picture more openly than you already have. Anyway, just some thoughts. Hope all is well.
March 6th, 2007 at 03:40 am 1173152405
We owe just under $35,000 on our home mortgage on a $100,000 house, which is at 5.5%. The reason we pay a little extra on it is that it is easier for my bookkeeping to pay $400 than $375.86. No, we don't get to take tax deductions, we don't get enough from it, we get more back with standard deductions. The mortgage my parents took out to pay my medical bills is down to $147,000 and that we are repaying is at 6.5%, no tax deductions for it as we don't own it or live in it.
401K has a little over $44,000 in it and is matched 50% up to 6%. We do 3% right now, but will be bumping it up to at least 4% when the funding for DH's next project comes through. Mostly we will be using the extra money to pay off the credit cards.
Our credit cards are at 3.9%, 4.9% and 2.9% at the moment. I've got a year at those rates for all but the 3.9 which goes to October of 2008.