In my blog post last May I wrote about our decision to accelerate the payoff of our mortgage. We had experienced a couple of financial close calls with our jobs and wanted to position ourselves in a less vulnerable place. We looked at the remaining balance of our mortgage and decided to throw everything we could scrape together at the principal balance of our mortgage. In May our goal was to pay off our mortgage by June 1, 2011.
Here is our update: We are nearing the end of 2010; we have revisited our goals and adjusted the date we think we can make the final payment. Our loan balance has been reduced to $26,250 and our revised goal is to cut it down to $20,500 by the end of the year. This will exceed our original goal by $4,500!
We are now looking at our last mortgage payment being May 1, 2011. This is a mere six months away and it will continue to require a significant sacrifice on our part. There is no guarantee that we won't have a setback that may require an adjustment but Lord willing we'll be celebrating with our last payment on May 1, 2011!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Closing the Escrow Account
We continue to move closer to paying off our mortgage; see my post, "And Then There Were Twelve!," last week we contacted our mortgage company and closed our escrow account. We would have to do our own escrow after we kill the mortgage anyway and I wanted to take this step now. The advantage of this is that we can have the money in our account drawing interest instead of giving that interest away to the mortgage company. Granted the interest income is very small right now but I'd rather have it in my pocket than theirs!
I was surprised by the speed in which we received our escrow check, I expected it to take a couple of weeks but it was in our mailbox three days later! The next step is to open another sub-account with ING and have the money automatically drafted from our checking account each month. By doing this when taxes and insurance bills are due we'll have the funds to pay the bills and we'll have earned some interest on the money as well.
I was surprised by the speed in which we received our escrow check, I expected it to take a couple of weeks but it was in our mailbox three days later! The next step is to open another sub-account with ING and have the money automatically drafted from our checking account each month. By doing this when taxes and insurance bills are due we'll have the funds to pay the bills and we'll have earned some interest on the money as well.
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