| Home value is updated monthly from Zillow.com/Zestimate.
Other Mortgage = HELOC/2nd Mortgage
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STUDENT LOAN SAGA:
In October I ended up putting some expenses on the credit card after going extreme with the debt snowball onto the student loans (cc will be paid off this week). Good lesson though, I can't get too aggressive on the snowball to the exclusion of being able to pay for every day expenses. The aggression was generated by my visit to the Dept of Education website and the review of my almost 7 years worth of payment history onto these loans, only to realize that of the $42,000+ in payments made since December 2002, only $12,000 had gone to pay down the principal on the loan! The rest was all interest! $30,000+ in interest to the Dept of Ed. Ha! No more, the gouging will end. Had I realized the enormity of this disparity (principal pay down vs. interest payments) earlier, I am sure I would have put off home ownership to pay them off a long time ago. Should have done that anyway! To make matters worse, they encourage you to consolidate, locking you in to a high interest rate (I was locked in at 8% years ago), and then, when rates go down as they have, they refuse to let you refinance, you are stuck. Hmph. Well, I refuse to play the game any longer. If I were to maintain their payoff schedule I would end up paying more in interest than my original loan balance. That will not be happening. They are not going to know what hit 'em. I will be working very hard to generate the extra income needed to keep the snowball as high as possible, as well as making necessary sacrifices in my current budget. Debt be darned!! |