This may not be news to some of you but this post over in the SavingAdvice.com highlights this problem: I screwed up Here’s a gentleman who earns six figures (up to $135k) that had $177k in mortgage debt in 1999, and now has double that today. This extra debt is non-producing debt, like auto debt, … Read more
I have essentially the equivalent of expanded cable in my hotel room out on the West Coast. This is more than we have at home. I don’t miss it, but cop shows can be entertaining. 😉 A majority of the ads this late at night (the ones that weren’t for performance enhancement products) revolve around … Read more
Jonathan over at My Money Blog commented on this Wall Street Journal article about Detroit neighborhoods getting hit with foreclosures. He snickered a little at the article, and after reading it myself I was doing pretty much the same thing. Homeowners are caving in under rising payments on their adjustable, subprime mortgages, and cannot sell … Read more
There were lots of great comments on my recent post about treating mortgage debt just like any other debt, meaning that it should be paid down faster than what is required by the lender. One of the arguments against throwing more money toward a fixed-rate mortgage is that inflation will make the fixed payment smaller … Read more
Amy of My Debt Free Goal aims to pay off $72,900 in debt by April 2009. By her own admission and hoping to go farther than she would otherwise. Paying off that amount involves throwing over $3,000 per month, every month, at that debt for the next two years — and that’s just principal repayment! … Read more
Nickel answered a reader’s question Friday on using a Roth IRA withdrawal to pay off a mortgage. The question: I’m 43. I’m looking to payoff my mortgage. Can I withdraw from my Roth IRA to payoff my house without penalty? I have $52K in a Roth IRA. My mortgage payoff would be $77K. I have … Read more
A good friend closed on land and a building loan today. He was telling me about the loan process and some of the terms of his building loan/mortgage. It had terms that I hadn’t run across before, but they were interesting terms. The loan is fixed rate, 30 years, but the payment increases after 10 … Read more
Michael Mihalik’s Debt is Slavery is a great book that has a lot of punch for 123 pages. Chapter 5 is all of four pages. Near the end he says: “If you won a multi-million-dollar lottery today, would you go back to work tomorrow? The majority of people would be happy to tell their bosses … Read more