Back to my Comfort Zone: Paying Down Debt

After last month’s success at curbing my spending, I think I thought that I was going to give it another go this month, and then the month after that.

Kind of easing into the whole new “family” situation gracefully… (by the way, still nothing to report.)

But this morning, I tossed that idea.

I’m going to attack my debts again.

I’ve done it before and I’m convinced that I’m better at paying stuff down than I am at saving up so… that’s what I’m going to do.

The only debt still on the books is the mortgage.

As of this morning, I owe $104659.21 to the former Countrywide Home Loans (now Bank of America).

Falling back on my tried and tested weekly payment method, each Friday from here on out, I’ll be making a payment of $230. This will be in addition to my regular mortgage payment.

My trusty $1.89 calculator indicates that this plan will knock off over 1% of my mortgage balance every single month.

The more reliable amortization calculator on BoA’s website tells me that this puts me on schedule to pay off the mortgage in October of 2014 — 18 years early and just 5 years away.

Now I know what you’re thinkin’…

It’s either, “Wow, this guy has a ton of disposable income” or “Shoulda bought a bigger house…”

It’s actually a little bit of both, I guess, but I’m not fooling myself… I bought well below my means so that I’d have a lot of disposable income. I’m aware of that.

And I doubt that I’ll be able to stick to this aggressive payment plan until October of 2014 — I don’t expect to have this much disposable income indefinitely — but I have the ability now and I’ve shown that I’m not the greatest at saving money so this seems like the smartest thing to do with it…

And if I’m successful, I’ll be mortgage free in my 30’s… and probably semi-retired before my kids are even out of elementary school.

That’s more appealing to me than any amount of disposible income OR a bigger house…