Cunning Plan is underway. The first mortgage payment of the year pushed the balance down to $72,203. Just made the first prepayment of January to push it down to $71,903. What fun to break a thousand-mark right away! I look forward to breaking a few of those this year...

You're going to catch up to me in no time. This is no good. hee hee. I really think you should buy more turtlenecks!

Just kidding. You're doing awesome. Keep it up, babe.

What are you going to do when your done paying off the house? I can't wait to find out....your doing great!

Well, if it makes you feel any better, peachy, I was unable to resist the opportunity to revamp half my wardrobe while I was in Europe. Not a very frugal move, I know. The "when will I ever have the chance to buy something like this?" mentality just kept kicking in. However, I am being very strict with myself about weeding my wardrobe now. I've got everything in another closet and am moving things back in only as I wear them. If I haven't worn it by the end of July, out it goes.

And fantasma, I don't exactly know yet. Right now my goals are to pay off the mortgage before I'm 50 and to have an "endowment fund" to cover the annual property taxes as soon thereafter as possible. But if I were in a position to retire at, say, 55, it would give me lots more time for my hobby/passion (playing and teaching music)!

Just made the second monthly principal prepayment of $150 to push the balance down to $71,753.93. My plan for the year is to pre-pay a total of an additional $450 per month. If I can bump that up by an extra hundred dollars or two during the summer, when my utility bills are lower, even better!

P.S. Edited to add: the mortgage website now thinks I will pay off my mortgage by 12/2031. I wonder how many years I'll take off the mortgage this year with these larger payments? The balance I'm aiming at, $65K, appears as the balance for 12/2013 in the current schedule. So it looks like almost three full years. (?) I'm going to track this change over the coming year....

We've upped our principal prepayment from $1200 ($100 per month extra in 2010) to $5,000 in 2011.

Woohoo! Good for you! I'll be cheering you on as we both try to catch up to peachy.

Wow Cecily - you are doing great!!! You are really inspiring. Thanks for all your input on my goals - I really appreciate it.

Too much pressure!
I'm not doing anything special until you guys get close. I'm at 65k or so now, with 6 years to go. The only prepayment I plan to make is in Dec. 2016, because I have a payment of like 95 dollars due in mid January to finalize my payment. That payment will be my Christmas present to myself if I'm still living here in 6 years.

So...good luck. HA!!HA!!

You're both doing awesome. I wish I could be as focused as you guys. I'm all over the place, and that's why I just watch/read everyone else. hee hee.

65K, eh? Barring unforeseen circumstances, we could very well be (turtle)neck and (turtle)neck by the end of 2011...

C-
I am at 65,500 now, and I pay about 10k a year, so at the end of 2011, I'll be at 56. I'm still not going to do anything special aside from my normal biweekly payments, so see you at the end of the year.

(Turtle) neck and (turtle) neck made me laugh. You're silly.

The snow keeps piling up, and I keep shoveling. The mortgage balance keeps going down, and I keep prepaying. February's regular payment puts the balance at $71,575; I made the first prepayment this morning to push it down to $71,275.

I am almost finished doing my taxes; I think the withholding change I set up last year is kicking in fully now, because I'm getting far less back as a refund this year than I did last year. I paid less in property taxes and mortgage interest, which also makes a difference to my refund. What refunds I am getting will go into the car and efund accounts to help meet my goals for the year (1K per year in car fund, one month's expenses per year in efund).

Finally, I'm $700 on the road to accumulating the $3000 I need to start the "endowment" fund for my property taxes. Now if I can just stay the course...

Made it to the second payday of the month; I'm finding out just how little room I've left to maneuver in my new budget. No Splurges!!!! Or at least very few. I lost my temper last weekend when, after I did the laundry, my sheets and mattress pad had finally shrunk to the point where they wouldn't fit the mattress anymore, and I marched out and bought new ones (on sale, of course; thank you JCPenney white sale!). Only problem is, I had to withdraw money from the "cushion" savings account to do this. Tomorrow, once the paycheck deposit clears, I will move the equivalent amount of money back to the cushion account, but that means saving a bit less toward the endowment. At the end of March (three-month trial) I am going to sit down and recalculate and see whether I want to leave myself a smidge more breathing room. This won't change the mortgage prepayment, but it might mean I am trying to save a bit less in the endowment fund every month. We'll see.

Set up the second prepayment for the month, effective tomorrow. My current balance sits at $71,275.64; the normal prepayment would have sent it down to $71,125.64, but just for fun, I am snowflaking a bit more to wind up with a balance of $71,111.11. Hee hee. At the moment, the bank website thinks I will be make my last payment on 10/1/2031 (already three years earlier than the original); I'll report back in a couple of days when the pre-payment has cleared, to show the bank's new date. (Little do they know.) I'm interested to see how many years I will take off the mortgage this year.

I'm liking this new prepayment plan. The final balance for February is more than $1k down from where I started at the beginning of January. What fun to watch the number drop so fast!

Also, I've noticed that the prepayment is increasing the regular principal payment. In January I looked up the principal payments on the online amortization and copied down the numbers for the year. They're not staying the same! March's regular principal payment was originally supposed to be 178.92; I just now looked it up again, and it's been reset at 179.99. Only an extra dollar, but hey, every little bit counts, right?

Isn't it amazing how a little extra makes such a big difference? Right now I am on course to payoff my home mortgage within a few years of yours - I think 3-2033. However, I want to retire on 9-19-32 so I have to keep plugging along and paying as much extra as I can. Are your taxes currently escrowed? If that is the case I would cut down slightly on the endowment so you don't have to sacrifice quite so much

Cecily that you are paying more in principal is a good thing, and a side effect of prepaying. As I'm sure you can tell from the amoritization schedules, they really front load all the interest on the mortgage so while you are sending in those regular payments, at first very little is actually put towards principal. As you pay it down, progressively more is allocated to principal until the end where practically all you are paying is principal. It appears to me is extra payments are applied to the "end" of the mortgage. That's why even though you are paying significant amounts it doesn't really change the years paid off as much as you think. Anyone know how extra payments are applied?