Milestone!

I input all of the payments we've made this month, as I do after every pay day. I put all of our new balances in, taking into account what we spent on vacation. The only outstanding payment we have for April is my car, but I can estimate the balance based on interest rates and fixed payment amounts.

And then I came to a shocking and exciting realization.

For the first time since I started my debt payoff journey, we owe less than $200,000 in debt!

This months debt total is $199,564.32!

Slow and steady wins the race, right?

In other news, I'm trying to refinance our house. Supposedly, HARP 2.0 eliminated a cap on LTV and appraisals on your home. As I am learning, this is not necessarily so. Since financial institutions have a choice in whether they want to offer HARP refinancing or not, most of them are not willing to provide refinancing through this program. Why should they, I guess, when they're making a profit off of those of us that are locked into high interest rates and haven't walked away from our homes yet.

I tried to refinance through my credit union yesterday, but they enforce a 125% LTV cap on their HARP loans. We're looking at closer to 148% based on Zillow's values. Even if we used the higher assessment we received from the auditors office for tax purposes, we're still at 133% LTV.

I hate that we live in a society where I'm being punished for being responsible and paying my mortgage, unlike the majority of my neighbors. I don't know if our situation would be more bearable if we were paying less on our home, but it would certainly lessen the sting. Every day I ask myself why we're still paying our mortgage when all of our neighbors have walked away and the current owners paid 1/3 of what we did for our home. We're gluttons for punishment, I guess.

We have to make a pretty big repair to our home, to the tune of over $8000, but I don't know where we're going to find the money. In better times, we might have been able to take out a home equity line of credit, but since our equity is negative, there is nothing to take out. It's our sewer line, and it's a ticking time bomb. The walls are cracked and it has started to shift in about 1/4-1/2 of an inch. I know we need to fix it, but I don't know where we'll find the money.

Roto Rooter was pretty shady about the whole thing; they told us in our home that it would be a max $4000 to have the work done, so I took a $4000 loan out of my 401k, only for them to give us a proposal of $8175. When I told him he had quoted us $4000 at our home, he said there was no way he would have quoted that because it was impossible and told me to take out a loan for the other $4000. I told him I took out a loan for the first $4000 and it wasn't even in the ballpark of what we were willing to do for our home at this time.

I applied for a new job too. I'm not sure if I am ready to leave where I am, but the job I applied for pays significantly more, and it's more in line with the career path I'm following. We'll see if I even get an interview, and then I will start making decisions if it's necessary.

Alas, I must get back to work, but I wanted to share my good news.

More Thinking

Tonight I've started thinking that maybe I'll take a loan out of my 401(k) to pay off the consolidation loan and one of my student loans. I'm trying to think through the tax ramifications of paying off a student loan early, and really, all of the ramifications of a 401(k) loan. The loan would not be that much, as I have not saved much for retirement, but it would be enough combined with my savings account and tax return to pay off my consolidation loan (10.49% interest rate) and my student loan (5%). By paying off the two and paying back the 401(k), I would save $70 a month, or $630 between next month and the end of the year. Again, this is money that I could put directly towards other debt. So I'd miss out on about $100 worth of tax deduction, but I'd pay $630 less in interest, so I think it's worth it. I just want to make sure I have my numbers right before I request the 401(k) loan because I'd hate to take out the loan to pay off these debts only to not have enough to pay off the two debts I'm planning to pay off and still be making the same number of loan payments.

I can not believe how much time I spend thinking about money. It is 1:30 on a Saturday morning, and I'm sitting here thinking about how best to pay off my credit card debt. I can not imagine how much of my life I'm going to get back once these debts are paid off. Maybe then I'll start spending all of my spare time thinking about how to save money instead.

I finally filed my tax return, so that's a step in the right direction as far as actually accumulating the money that is needed to pay this debt off. I have got to remember what I feel right now next time I want to take out a boatload of debt. Yeah.