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To: AppyPappy
Mine doesn’t matter because I don’t have debt.

Until this car loan the only debt I had was our house. But my plan will be to have the car paid off by the end of the year. Use the credit cards because I like the cash back but always pay off the balances every month. I dream of the day I can pay off the house...

16 posted on 08/21/2007 1:09:25 PM PDT by the_devils_advocate_666
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To: the_devils_advocate_666
Until this car loan the only debt I had was our house. But my plan will be to have the car paid off by the end of the year. Use the credit cards because I like the cash back but always pay off the balances every month. I dream of the day I can pay off the house...

I like your attitude--perhaps because it is not very different from my own.

As concerning your desire to pay off your mortgage, I would strongly suggest that you procure an amortization schedule. When we refinanced our condo in the early 1990s, a co-worker of my wife offered us this tip. And it worked. Big time!

At the time of our re-fi, we owed about $40,000. By making an extra principal-only payment each month (NOTE: this is a separate transaction; it must NOT be conflated with the regular monthly payment), we saved over $19,000. Not bad, since that is about half of the beginning balance.

In the beginning, we were able to retire an entire monthly payment for around $5. (No, that is not a joke!) Although the amount of principal rises gradually, it does so at the rate of only about a dollar or two per month--a negligible amount.

I truly hope you will try this (assuming, of course, that the terms of your mortgage do not authorize the lien-holder to penalize you for making pre-payments). It saved us a real bundle of money--as well as retiring our final debt.

(NOTE: Even if you itemize when you do your taxes, and take the home-mortgage deduction, that does not come anywhere close to saving you the kind of money that this will.)

103 posted on 08/21/2007 1:37:14 PM PDT by AmericanExceptionalist (Democrats believe in discussing the full spectrum of ideas, all the way from far left to center-left)
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