Anyone here not invest, but pay down their mortgage?

[kinkytoes]

Originally Posted by joe moving

The only way my property will be worth 0 is if NYC gets nuked. If not, then not only will it always be worth something but I'll always have a place to live. Somehow zillow is "Z"Estimating us for reasonably more than we bought it for. We have also made some significant upgrades (kitchen...where they count!!!) with more to come (bathroom!). Wife and I finally decided on splitting the monthly investment... maxing out the Roth IRA and the rest into mortgage. Sadly on paper this is only going to cut 11 years off of it and that is assuming we can make those extra payments for the next 17 years, unlikely once if/when little ones come into the picture...

It's kind of tough, isn't it? Looking at my current mortgages makes me think twice about buying a home for what they're charging nowadays.
Even with the "low" interest rates, that's still a WHOLE lotta interest. If you're serious about paying it off, it's pretty daunting.
I don't know what ppl do if they have a 500K mortgage. . . I used to think they must make WAY more than I do, but after the "crisis" happened I found out they don't. What the bleep were some of these people thinking. A mortgage is a loan.

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by joe moving

The only way my property will be worth 0 is if NYC gets nuked. If not, then not only will it always be worth something but I'll always have a place to live. Somehow zillow is "Z"Estimating us for reasonably more than we bought it for. We have also made some significant upgrades (kitchen...where they count!!!) with more to come (bathroom!). Wife and I finally decided on splitting the monthly investment... maxing out the Roth IRA and the rest into mortgage. Sadly on paper this is only going to cut 11 years off of it and that is assuming we can make those extra payments for the next 17 years, unlikely once if/when little ones come into the picture...

You have a mortgage. That mortgage has some amount which you would have paid, if you had actually made all payments for it's 30 year term. That amount of total payments could change by how much you put into principle payments each month.

I once wrote a program, using one of our mortgages. It projected how my mortgage would be effected if I made an X dollar / month principle payment. I had it loop on even dollar increments up through the entire monthly payment amount.

On that one mortgage, I found that the optimum benefit would be achieved by paying $200 each month onto the principle.

To pay less, or to pay more, would in either case reduce the benefit received.

I no longer have that program, I have long since stopped writing code.

However I would recommend that you consider discovering for yourself exactly how much is the optimum amount to pay onto your mortgage.

Each mortgage is slightly different.

Good luck

[vandre]

Originally Posted by forest beekeeper

You have a mortgage. That mortgage has some amount which you would have paid, if you had actually made all payments for it's 30 year term. That amount of total payments could change by how much you put into principle payments each month.

I once wrote a program, using one of our mortgages. It projected how my mortgage would be effected if I made an X dollar / month principle payment. I had it loop on even dollar increments up through the entire monthly payment amount.

On that one mortgage, I found that the optimum benefit would be achieved by paying $200 each month onto the principle.

To pay less, or to pay more, would in either case reduce the benefit received.

I no longer have that program, I have long since stopped writing code.

However I would recommend that you consider discovering for yourself exactly how much is the optimum amount to pay onto your mortgage.

Each mortgage is slightly different.

Good luck

Could you expand a little bit into this? How do you determine what is optimum?

Is there any rule-of-thumb of sorts? (i.e. increasing payment by 70% decreases interest paid by 370%)

p.s. I'm a programmer as well, so I wouldn't mind creating the same program myself

[Submariner]

Originally Posted by vandre

Could you expand a little bit into this? How do you determine what is optimum?

Is there any rule-of-thumb of sorts? (i.e. increasing payment by 70% decreases interest paid by 370%)

p.s. I'm a programmer as well, so I wouldn't mind creating the same program myself

Obviously as you write the formula you are saying what is optimum for you.

I was looking at the sum of what would be paid over 30 years [monthly payments times 360], and reducing that.

So I was trying to rate each set of results, with a view toward ranking how much exactly I would have paid during the life of the mortgage.