i thought this post was going to be entirely different (note that i haven't actually written it yet, but i can feel it) - i thought that since we started on the 7-3 track that i would be grumpy and groggy and otherwise unpleasant, but i'm happy to report that i'm pretty much like i normally am in the morning, it's just earlier. and maybe i'm a tad bit hungrier. but not grumpy and certainly not groggy.
last night was a relief. last night we went to the bank where we'll have our mortgage for the next five years and met with our new banker (our banker up and left for toronto without mentioning it to us) and were told that we're on track for everything and we will be able to get our money out of our rrsps. about one third of our savings is in there so not being able to get it out would have been somewhat disasterous. AND our interest rate went down as of today. perrrfect!
if all of our numbers are correct and we pay only the mortgage amount (no extras) over the next five years, our 25 year amortization turns into 16.3 years left instead of (25-5=) 20. how exciting is that? the last thing we want to do is have a mortgage forever so we'll be doing everything we can, short of eating grilled cheese sandwiches while sitting on lawn furniture, to be free of this debt sooner. and thankfully we're in a good place to make that happen.
aside: matt and julie, we want to know about your new house! we want details and pictures and a tour!
another aside: congratulations to jessp who just landed her first teaching job. the poor girl is going away all weekend and starts monday, but i'm sure she'll do great. good luck, jess!
back to me, because this blog is all about me. so because of this move to starting work at 7am we had to get up early and wanted to go to bed early. somehow i tricked my body into believing that it was tired before 11 and managed to actually fall asleep so that when the alarms - we have 3 - started going off at 5:20, i was okay. we put j's second alarm and my alarm in the hall and across the room to make ourselves get up. tonight i'm going to make sure the heat will be on that early because doing that to yourself is cruel, but is even worse when it's frigidly cold out of bed. we were up and showered and at work all before 7am. amazing. and, the absolute BEST part of this whole deal, is that we get to leave at 3pm. leave at 3!
also, did i mention that traffic before 7 in the morning is non-existent? it took us just over five minutes, definitely less than ten, to get here this morning. there will be less of a difference after work but still.
and that is my take on things before 8am.
Thursday, November 2
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5 comments:
7-3 is great if you can get up that early. Especially now that winter is upon us. I always hated traveling home in the dark. Somehow it feels like your day is already over, even though it's only 4pm.
amazing news about the lower interest rate! we've got a fixed rate, so I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear you. And I agree about the 'do everything short of eat grilled cheese' to pay it down, except I should probably add 'visit family overseas' to that list or I'll end up in the doghouse :-P My insurance agents (friends of the family) paid off their 25 year mortgage in 6 years. Holy penny-pinching batman! Mind you, interest rates were crazy back then so they had some serious incentive to get it over with.
well i can definitely get up (with lots of complaining and whining) and i love the fact that we'll be done early. it's just a little tough getting used to it.
we have a fixed rate once we start our mortgage. so we were guaranteed a rate and guaranteed the lower rate if it ever dropped. so if it goes up again we'll be locked in at the lower rate. it almost seems too good to be true, but that's the deal we got.
what are your plans for the length of your mortgage?
Are you on weekly payments instead of monthly or biweekly? We have found that to make a huge difference.
we're going to do accelerated bi-weekly so the payments coincide with our paycheques. i think that's the best option for us. but yes it will shave years off our mortgage and that's the whole goal is to be done paying for the house as soon as we can without sacrificing too much.
thanks for the comment, sue. i hope you're feeling better!
Weekly for us, and we're fixed for 5 years. I've been saving for the tax-man these days but once my employment situation is a little more clear (current contract is up in Jan) then I plan to start matching every second payment, or at the very least one per month. That should knock down the amortization by a few years on top of the advantage from the weekly payments. I haven't crunched the numbers, but it should be somewhere around 17 years. That's more than half my life.... but it's so worth it.
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