Yikes. Interesting hurdle coming up. A conference for work. In D.C.
I can expense food but shopping is going to be hard to resist.

As someone who frequently travels to DC for work, I don't think you'll have much trouble resisting shopping. Maybe it's just me, but DC does not seem like a shoppin' kind of town. I've spent many weeks of my life there in meetings and honestly I can't remember buying anything...oh wait, there's the Patagonia store in Georgetown, I have spent money there

Whenever I go on business trips I'm usually too busy to do anything but work.

Yeah, I don't think of DC as a shopping destination - and I lived there for 4 years. Now food on the other hand...there are some GREAT restaurants there.

I think that depends on where you live now, as in its all relative.

True. Compared to some places it's probably a shopping mecca. Depends on what you're looking for I guess.

funny! y'all were right. It wasn't that bad. I think I'm out $28. Bought very simple gifts for my friends kids,
a t-shirt for me $8.97 in the clearance bin at ESPNZone and a very nice poster at a museum that
I want to frame and hang and that's that. The meals were all expensed.

Yay! As my mother said to me yesterday: And now you are back to your chicken soups
and you'll like them too! Heh. She is right. I was able to walk past all temptations just thinking about my
house. And being in the very hot and humid city made me doubly happy to have my own little corner of paradise.

Last monday while I was in DC an auto-payment was made on my HELOC.

That is Payment number 2 of 36....

My savings account is on track to gift that mortgage on 10/16 just like I've been planning.

I called sprint and hollered at them that a fee I wanted removed LAST month was still on there this month.
They then credited me and my bill is now lower than I budgeted for. Every penny counts.

Watch the pennies... the dollars will take care of themselves.

Cady, I'm curious. Do you actually have a HELOC or has it been converted to a loan?

Hi Mia,

I've been so long-winded that some of my particulars are quite a few pages back now so here is a quick summary of my housing costs and loans:


====================================================

Well what they GAVE me was : $139,000

(27,700) in a 25 year ARM at 9.5% for the 20% = $242/month
(111,150) in a 30 year fixed at 6.625% for the 80% = $1062 includ tax/ins


What YNAB and Quicken and I are opting to PAY is
$1062 to the fixed for 36 months while I send an additional $125 to the HELOC every month *and*
on October 16th and April 16th of EVERY YEAR an additional $3000 to the principle.

That is 6K off the principle annually.
That 18K in 3 years plus the $4500 (36 months of $125) = $22,500 in principle reduction in 3 years.
The rest of the balance is taken care of by the minimum payments they are asking for.
On April 16th 2010 the HELOC is retired.

On June 1st, 2010 I begin sending everything I sent to the HELOC to the Fixed Rate mtg along with the
3K every 6 months.

Voila: June 1st 2017 the Big mortgage is paid off.

======================================================================

I hope this helps clarify what size boulder I'm pushing uphill.

And the ARM is indeed a HELOC... I paid under appraised value for the house so I qualified. But I put the checks that come with it in my safe deposit box at the bank. I'll not use them except in case of EXTREME emergency and when the loan is retired I'll close that account.

Read the main entry today at GRS and began to wonder how much of that list I'm already doing.

================================

Get rid of cable television. NO
Unplug all appliances. NO
Drive less. YES
Buy generic. Sometimes
Cook from scratch. Always
Drink only water. Tea/Coffee made at home count?
Don’t eat out. YES
Never buy garbage bags. No but..... hmmmmm
Minimize the use of heat and a/c. YES
Don’t buy things you don’t need. YES
Repair things, don’t replace them. YES
Buy used. Sometimes
Never pay interest. NO but one day
Hang clothes to dry. NO
Don’t smoke or drink. YES

===========

Well now I know that if my current scheme doesn't work I still have places I can cut back. Wow. Those folks are serious!

Cady, we're pretty close to your pay off schedule, except we have a (fixed) home equity loan and 15 year fixed mortgage. Yep, that's a big boulder you're pushing but your plan looks excellent.

Now I'm gonna have to go read about this No using garbage bag thing

Interesting, Cady. I never thought of going through the checklist myself. Let's try it:

Get rid of cable television. REDUCED TO BASIC ($12/mo), BUT KRIS UNWILLING TO LET GO
Unplug all appliances. NO
Drive less. NOT ENOUGH - DO TRY TO BIKE OR WALK WHEN POSSIBLE
Buy generic. SOMETIMES
Cook from scratch. OFTEN
Drink only water. I JUST DID THIS FOR A MONTH. IT WASN'T SO BAD.
Don’t eat out. NO.
Never buy garbage bags. NO, THOUGH WE USE A LOT OF SPARE BAGS FOR GARBAGE, TOO
Minimize the use of heat and a/c. YES
Don’t buy things you don’t need. GETTING BETTER AT IT!
Repair things, don’t replace them. HM. I NEED TO WORK ON THIS.
Buy used. OFTEN.
Never pay interest. 25 MARCH 2008 TARGET DATE
Hang clothes to dry. NO
Don’t smoke or drink. RIGHT NOW, YES. BUT ONLY BECAUSE I'M GOING THROUGH A "THREE MONTHS WITH NO ALCOHOL" PERIOD

Looks like there's lots I can do there to save money. Of course the key is how much of these are worth doing for me? How many of these things am I willing to sacrifice? It's important for everyone to find that thin line between frugality and happiness. When you go to far, you're being cheap, and that's when saving money begins to hurt.

I think the "repair things rather than replace them" is getting harder and harder because 1. you have to spend a lot of time hunting around these days to find someone who can fix things, and 2. the cost of fixing things is often not much less than buying new. I have an ancient (20 year old) vacuum cleaner, made by Sharp, and it's so old that the brushes on the attachments are worn down to the bone. I wanted to buy a new attachment for vacuuming the floor, but when I called Sharp they quoted me some ridiculous price like $150 because the model has been discontinued and is so old.

One thing I have found that can be repaired easily and affordably is shoes: I have several pairs of comfortable shoes that I bought more than 20 years ago and I just keep getting them resoled. I bought my one pair of dress shoes (that I wear when I have to wear a suit) from the Rockport factory outlet in 1986, and I've resoled those shoes about six times now; they look and feel good as new.

But repairing electronics and some household goods is almost as expensive as buying new, and for esoteric stuff you can spend a lot of time trying to find someone to fix it. My girlfriend has a 100-year-old armoire that was built in her grandmother's house in France, and I had to go to a machine shop to have hinges made to replace two that had broken...it took me weeks to find a shop that would do it and it cost about $40 per hinge.

Brad. You are so right. Most things these days are not even designed to be repaired. And the knowledge of how is getting lost to time. And altho I'd like to do that with shoes it turns out that some shoes, soft soled, soft sides cannot be done either. Or at least the last shoe repair guy in town here told my that with my last pair of m/c boots.

JD That made me feel better! Thanks for joining in... I think some of those are not applicable to my needs right now either but it is nice to know of other places to pinch that penny.

====

The IRS and I are now in some kind of agreement. Not only did the first woman I talk with insult me, she also didn't do her job correctly. That first person was unspeakably nasty suggesting I was trying to scam the gov because I was opting to pay over time. Fortunately I woke up this morning thinking that I hadn't heard from them and I decided to call and ask about the installment plan. She'd never set it up!!! They'd cashed all my checks I'd sent but never processed the paperwork that had been included. Grrrrr. I THINK it is all set up now. Altho I have one more check to write before it is automated. They will credit all prior payments to the balance. sigh. I hate to wish my life away but I'm looking forward to tax day next year when the balance is paid off. I can use $110 extra a month.

Ah well. As my honey likes to remind me: At least you have the money to pay it all. He's right.

I might only have $5 left over but at least I can make it.

Well wow... I spent the weekend of the 14th at a dear friends house. They threw a party for about 150 - a 10 hour party with an open bar the whole time and two different meals catered, including a full roast pig. They had 6 cars in the driveway including 2 Lexus (Lexii?) , a 2 seater convertible Mercedes, and asstd others. A Miele built-in coffee machine, ($2K!) (WTF They MAKE things like that????)

The loot the kids pulled in at the party (about $800 each) was partly in gift cards partly cash. God only knows what the host made. Heck they flew me up there first class and had a private car service meet me at the airport and return me. It was about $900 just to fly me up there for the weekend.

No wonder I've had a hard time returning to my chicken soups and $30 week food budget.

I spent last weekend being bad. Really bad, (in a bitter, I'm tearing the tags off these clothes so I can't return them kind of bad.) So after my week of unrestrained spending I'm trying to get back in my narrow gauge track.

Totally unfair of my psyche to compare my circumstances to theirs but it is so hard not to do so. We are exactly the same age and the main difference between us is she married young to a younger man who at 19 had already sold his brokerage to a large bank and was a VP. This party was his 40th b-day party for himself. They are 22 years ahead of me when it comes to investing and saving and buying a house. And I have to keep remembering their down payment on their house was substantial and was a gift from her parents. It was also hard because I know they aren't doing this on credit. They have large amounts of cash socked away.

I can watch my friends here spend on things that are crazy and I don't covet it because I know they can't REALLY afford it. They are merely using future earnings and paying interest. But that up there was crazy. That was wallowing in the rewards of smart money choices and doing it for and among other very very very wealthy people.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..............................

Must ..... stay......... focused.........

Must not look in the next lane......

Me and my money.

Just me.

And my paid off house.

(I posted this to the main page but I dup'd it here so that this journal will have a record of this entry as well.)


I discovered two things on Wednesday that kept me up all night.

1) My HELOC ($27,700 ARM @ prime plus 1.25) is interest-only.

2) They never applied my teaser rate so I overpaid for the first 90 days.


When I called customer support on Wednesday night the man said "Almost all HELOCs are interest-only Ma'am."
I had no idea and thought I'd read every word of my loan documents. In retrospect, I was looking for the words: "Interest-Only" in there somewhere. The line, now that I've found it, says: Your minimum payment will not reduce your principal. Which of course means your minimum payment is interest only. But for some reason I didn't comprehend that when reading that before.


Anyway. After conceding they were right, and being very glad I've sent $125 per month in addition to the minimum since the start, I turned to the other matter. One of the few times in my life when I knew I was right and I could just repeat over and over: "Bottom of page 6 of the 24 page loan document" Until he conceded I was right and he sent me to a supervisor. After being on hold for 40 minutes I had to hang up. I called back Thursday morning and got a belligerent pissy woman who kept talking over me and telling me to complain to my originating loan issuer. I just kept repeating "Nope. It is you guys. You screwed up. Go to page 6 of my loan document please." And finally she got what I was saying. She then became quite polite. I can tell she spends most of her day belittling people calling in for extensions in time to pay. I bet the customer is hardly ever right in her mind. Well 3 transfers later I'm talking to a lovely women in accounting and she is going to figure out how much I overpaid and then apply that amount to my principle. I might be clever enough to have read that small print but I can't seem to grasp how to program my spreadsheet to subtract two different compound interests over a 90 day period. I should have been charged 7.25% during the teaser period and they jumped right into my 9.5% rate from the very first day. The difference might be $127 I think. But whatever it is, that is my hard-earned and harder-saved money. I want my future self to have it, not Countrywide. So yay. One for the little people.

but boo... I've now decided instead of sending $3000K every six months to the principle as a HELOC birthday gift I will save interest money in the long run by sending $500 every month. So next Thursday, and on the 16th of the month of every month thereafter for 39 more months I'll be sending $625 on top of my minimum payment.

Ouch.

All this to come back around to my subject line: I finally get it.

My mother always says: "A renter is never as far ahead at the end as the homeowner."

On March 1st 2007 I was renting this house paying $675 a month and calling myself being frugal and paying down debt.

In this month, August 2007, I will be paying a total of $1908 a month towards my housing, ($1062 the big mtg, $221 HELOC interest only minimum payment, $625 prepayment to the HELOC, ) which is a $1233 a month increase over my old rent of $675.

I HAD NO IDEA I COULD FIND THIS MUCH MONEY IN MY INCOME!!!

I'd have been debt free by now if I'd been scrimping THIS hard before. I just have way more fear of losing the house than I ever had of paying too much interest before.

And further all this money is merely a gift to my future self. One day, God willing and the creek don't rise, I can get all this money back out of the house.

Color me "Duh."