Pay your principle down NOW!

[trevorlawrence]

Okay, nobody ever mentions this, and I think you should all be doing it. Pay your 30 yr. fixed down in less than 15 yrs. without commiting yourself to the 15 yrs.

When you sit down at the table to sign all of those awful papers at your closing, hang back and speak to the loan officer in private when all of the buzzards have left the building. Tell him/her that you want to know HOW MUCH YOU WOULD HAVE TO ADD EACH MONTH TO THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MORTGAGE IN ORDER TO PAY IT OFF IN 15 YRS.

When you get your magic number (say it's $240.00), then just automatically add an extra $25.00 to the extra $240 every month, so you're putting in $265.00 extra a month. It's at a higher interest rate than you'll be guaranteed elsewhere, if you were banking the $265.

I did this, unbeknownst to my husband, and when the note arrived after 11 years that the house was mortgage-free, all I could hear was, HOW DID YOU DO THAT??

When his mouth finally closed, we bought a condo at the beach with a new mortgage, and now that's almost paid off. So we bought a place in New England at the beach (we make more money now). If anything crushing happens, we can always sell one, but we'll always be ahead of the mortgage payments. DO IT! It takes discipline, when you'd rather be taking vacations, but we take plenty of vacations now, and our kids are out of college and the real estate is the smartest thing we ever did, but don't pay all that interest! Pay your principle down NOW!