Posted on 12/16/2020 5:30:44 PM PST by SteveH
i paid off my home mortgage yesterday.
(it was a really good refinance rate, but whatever.)
to do it, i liquidated some rollover stock (SPY) (i am retirement age, so it gets taxed as regular income, i believe).
then i did a bank transfer from my broker to a local bank.
finally, the local bank ,happened to hold the mortage, so i simply paid the full mortgage owed amount as of yesterday from my checking account to my mortgage account.
it still has not registered today, but i am not expecting a problem since i have a receipt that shows the internal transfer of the full amount as determined by a visit to the bank office immediately prior to the transfer (the amount evidently changes every day due to compound interest).
otherwise, the mortgage would have taken about 8 more years to pay off at the normally scheduled rate of payoff.
i need to take out about 33+% + 11+% extra money out of the IRA for federal and state taxes. this bumps me up two IRS tax brackets for this year.
in return, however, i get some peace of mind knowing that at least i own my home free and clear if anything serious should start to happen and interfere with ordinary commercial transactions (i have some conjectures about worst case scenarios which i won't go into in this post-- perhaps everyone does) (i have not spoken with any of my neighbors, most of whom are suburbanites who keep to themselves and if i am to believe voting records are somewhat liberal, with many newly arrived middle class professional immigrants from asia).
ok... good, bad, ugly? one person on FR said earlier not to do this. however, i am just too nervous.
along the way, i had an unsettling experience. i am already used to less bank branch offices being open, and those that are, with reduced hours and reduced customer occupancy.
however, last friday at 3:30 PM i was on the freeway listening to the radio and heard the USSC news. so i tried effecting a wire transfer over cell phone. the first attempt, the line went dead, and the second attempt, the wait time increased from 5 minutes to 25 minutes. i thought this was strange since i had been promised over the phone the previous day that this would be a snap to perform over the phone. after driving a couple of exits, i turned around and went back to my brokerage to perform a wire transfer to my local bank in preparation for the mortage payoff.
the brokerage local office appeared deserted, with only two cars in the parking lot. in fact it was open, but there was only one person present, only one desk and only one working monitor in the entire office, which was only dimly lit. a teller appeared on the monitor screen. i was told that no one could help me at that time and that i should try using the phone. they also had a drop box but i had no papers to fill out and there did not seem to be a printer there. i felt nervous and frustrated, and left immediately. later i heard that the brokerage employees were in fact working from home.
the situation was more normal at my usual bank, but the brokerage seemed to me to be a harbinger of a lowered level of service that might be given at the banks if things progress far enough with the bug.
anyways, the entire process took me about 5 business days not including a day or two of investigating different options of proceeding. i could probably have reduced this to three days if i went at a fast pace, and maybe shaved off another day off of that if i had known exactly what to do and when, and let it be the one and only priority for those two business days.
Under Commie-la Harris whether you or the bank holds the mortgage will be irrelevant when she starts the redistribution, you might as well have put that wealth in horse manure.
’ i need to pay more than 25% in my tax bracket.”
$163k Single
$326 MFJ
Not everyone lives up there!
Indeed.
Per my Quicken account, my entire portfolio (not just part of it) is up over 20% on average each and every year for the past 5 years.
There is such a thing as good debt. We refinanced at 3.25% and have a few years to pay it off. But no way I am paying it early if I am making 20% elsewhere.
But again, it is a personal decision. What I am comfortable with might keep.aome.other people up at night. And in the end, you need to sleep.
Wall Street wants Biden to win. Meaning Wall Street will be fine either way. BTW- we will win. I have no doubts
A chunk of your mortgage is always interest and what with interest rates so low for investments, by not paying interest on your mortgage, it’s like investing that money for that interest rate.
And I agree about the hyperinflation threat.
We’ve had that in mind with our purchases. Might as well get the things we’ve needed, wanted, or planned for while we still have the money and it’s still worth something.
And while they are still available.
Very true
There simply aren't ANY homes in the area I want for sale right now. Nothing. And haven't been for weeks. And, most of the lots of those homes are not suitable for gardening, being hilly. So even if one comes along, it has to have a pretty flat yard or it's unsuitable for me. Just color me very frustrated.
> I understand the desire to own “free and clear.” But, interest rates are at all time lows, at or less than inflation rates, so I don’t see the risk to you, especially if you can find above-mortgage rate returns for the cash you have. So, while one should always pay off high-interest-rate debt like credit cards, its best to hang onto low-interest rate loans.
> It’s a great time to be a debtor.
I am just looking at what happened to restaurants, gyms, and hair salons, and thinking to myself that there but for the grace of providence go i. i view paying off the mortgage as a failsafe measure. i could still be wrong. from one perspective, one can walk away from a mortgage and still be alive. perhaps that is what you are referring to? i am concerned about possible bank and brokerage failures, and being locked out of getting any savings out before there is an extended “bank holiday.” my concerns may be misplaced (and so i may be over-reacting), but otoh i never saw this situation coming to begin with. that makes me nervous: what else that has not happened yet did i fail to anticipate? how far is the deep state willing to go to preserve its hegemony over the american people?
It is an amazing feeling to have zero debt.
If you can do it, do it.
EXACTLY! Nothing is free not even your paid off home... The government sees to it by a yearly income called tax the hell outta them so they can pay for the freebies we don’t get!
“What I am comfortable with might keep.aome.other people up at night. And in the end, you need to sleep.”
My wife checks the futures each night. I tell her to ignore them and go to sleep.
She frets when her Apple stock goes down a point, never mind that she is up over 100-fold.
If you pay off you house you can still invest.
You don’t have to have a mortgage to invest.
You can use what used to be your mortgage payment to invest with.
Well you have to be invested in the community. Taxes are a fact of life.
“and being locked out of getting any savings out before there is an extended “bank holiday.” “
Yet you put that money into your house where you can’t ever get to it if the SHTF!
“You can use what used to be your mortgage payment to invest with.”
Obviously, you are missing a few details ...
This covid-1984 was a transfer of wealth from restaurants, gyms, and hair salons to Amazon, Costco and other Tycoons. If you’re not in one of those business you will be OK for a while
> I can see why you did it. Something about paid off debts heading into uncertainty that has some appeal. Also, for anyone sitting on a ton of cash and next to 0% interest rates, what else are you going to do? Wait for a massive devaluing of the dollar? That’s our problem right now.
> I fully expect the stock markets to drop quite a bit after a few months under Biden/Harris. Various forces will try and keep it propped up, but with personal and country bills coming due, I can see a lot of these assets being sold off in order to keep a small business from going under and/or to keep from defaulting on home loans.
Just so (although i do not have a brick and mortar business).
The way I figure it is that Joe/Kamala will receive pressure to raise taxes. Higher taxes will drive down the economy and stock prices. We will all get “haircuts.” we will all be told that this is for the good of the nation, other people deserve reparations, free health care, free education, etc. I expect Joe/Kamala will be left with little choice but to implement such a plan almost immediately— say within the first 100 days, and certainly within the first calendar year.
inflation to pay for leftover unfunded social programs seems likely to ensue at some point. we will be told that trump was to blame, as our bank savings dwindle (another haircut for the middle class).
basically, if joe/kamala reach power, we will get haircut after haircut. our economic strength will ebb and with it, our political strength. and at some point in the near future, home to home gun confiscation will ensue. if that happens, we only have a couple of years at most before we become the next venezuela. at that point, it might be a good idea to try to leave the country.
back to what to do in the short term, i have already set aside a small physical stash of gold and junk silver coin, paper money, and ammo. i will probably add to this over time but treat the paper money with caution since it is only fungible to a certain degree. i believe Mexico purged their currency every 12 years. Who knows, Joe/Kamala might not wait that long?
“It is an amazing feeling to have zero debt.”
I get an email whenever a dividend is paid. Amazing feeling to see those dividends increasing each year.
> Your home mortgage won’t be a problem with chaos.
Maybe so but then it would not be total chaos, would it? :)
> You’ve lost a chance for catching the bottom of some stocks.
That is possible but since i am retirement age, in theory my understanding is that i should not be playing with stocks to begin with (a rule i violated due to trump winning in 2016 btw, but whatever, rules are made to be broken, i suppose).
most of my money is still in stocks right now. i am slowly adjusting towards some high flyers but attempting at the same time to aside an almost equal amount of cash. my mortgage play temporarily interfered with this (i needed to pull out more cash than i expected in order to cover prospective taxes) but i intend to fix this in the next day or so if i can.
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