Anyways if you would like a copy of my excel spreadsheet I would be happy to send it to you. just email me.
Thanks for your writings, hopefully we can teach our children better than our parents did us.

Eli

I still think that if paying off your mortgage early is important to you, you’d get more BANG for your bucks by putting the extra 1500 there.

You don’t have to decide now. And even if you do, you can always change your mind. THAT is the beauty of life. Nothing is fixed in stone.

Trent, putting all your writing into the public domain was very laudable. You rejected the ads, and put your work in the public domain. Personally, I wish you’d stick those ads back up, and get some return for all you give to others.

A few other thoughts:

We are very debt adverse as well. As much as those student loans bug you, if you’ve paid off only 1000 in principle on your mortgage since July, you’d get more bank for your 1500 extra debt payments if they went to the principle of your mortgage.

This said, I don’t feel that a mortgage is necessarily something you need to pre-pay.

I really wanted to pre-pay ours, but we couldn’t afford it, we had too many things going on. We had a 15-year mortgage. We prepaid 2500 at some point once, when we were feeling flush.

You know what? One day it just happened. Last August I went to the bank, and realized we only owed 32 on our mortgage in September. I called DH, he said, yeah, go for it.

I know that our ages won’t help you much, we were 47 and 51 when that happened. In a very HCOLA.

But you’re on the road to the rest of your life. THAT is what you have to figure out, not the debt repayments.

I wish you all the best. You have done so much good for so many people.

Also, cut yourself some slack. Student loans and a mortgage are both considered “good debt,” in that they either increase income or decrease spending in the long run. That you will have your educational loans paid off in another 2 years is awesome. It’s okay to be still paying off a mortgage when your kids are in college.

I think we underestimate how spectacularly dull life can be when it’s good. I have come to believe that the concept of living in a state of “blissful happiness” is not realistic. if I can achieve balance, contentment and a sense of contribution, I believe that is as close as I can come to living in a state of happiness. In fact, I believe happiness, like sadness is an extreme state of being, like being drunk or high.

Sometimes we get brain smart and strive for simplicity but when we get it, it’s like “is that all there is?”. I think we’ve come to desire everything in our lives to be somehow glamorous. So living simply has to look and feel like a commercial on television or something out of an organic magazine…perfectly earthy and green and well tended, with all involved feeling content and fulfilled.

This is the richest country in the world and nomatter what our circumstances, barring living in abject ignorance, poverty and/or disability, we can rise above anything and have most anything. Opportunity is what America is about. And we have availed ourselves of these opportunities time and again in the course of our lives. We live better in than most people in the world….we eat, clothe our children, have a roof and shelter over our heads and education.

It’s like our lives should have some sort of profound soundtrack at all times. Silence and stillness and simplicity has become a bad fit for Americans, generally speaking. We live for excitement and cowboyism, commercialism and consumerism. Just getting through the day alive and kicking isn’t enough. We should probably look at that a little because it’s killing our culture. It’s not enough to have enough.

We are managing well, making our payments on time and all that good stuff, but when I sit down and think about the actual figures (alarming!) and how long it will take to get this monkey off our backs, it gets very frightening. I get what you’re saying, Trent, but this kind of thinking just serves to stress you out. You can’t make things go any faster than they’re already going.

Coincidentally, I am also one of those rush-to-pay people. I used to be very bad with managing my bills, but now I’m doing the finances for both my husband and I because it’s so easy to keep on top of them when you pay your bills immediately. The wait between weeks is a killer, though, I agree.

Trent, look at the past few years. You got married. You had kid #1. You had kid #2. You bought a house.

These are the life events that are Big and Scary and thus exhilarating. Plus for each one you get HEAPS of societal affirmation. I remember all the support I got when I bought my house … it was kind of annoying, like now I was “really” an adult.

You are probably feeling some post-skydive depression. Mrs. Monkey is so right … boredom. The rut. Being “stuck,” as another poster put it.

Boredom is a huge source of stress that very few of us talk about or own up to, a lack of self-awareness that makes people do some stupid things (ie, ruin the quality of happiness hey had in their early marriage. I see my sister do this. Being a stay at home mother was her goal, but she severaly underestimated the toll that cabin fever would have on her mood.)

Great discussion.

I myself can be impatient person, but paying off debts, investing in retirement are not working on the same time scale as your thoughts and actions. It’s like looking at a tree and being angry “why aren’t you growing faster?”. If it is planted and growing, it should be enough satisfaction that it will be there 20 years from now.
Rest assured you are planting the seeds for a healthy and safe life for you and your family, and moreover promoting values to your children that will help them in life, far more valuable than any amount in the bank. for if you don’t have good values, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, it will be squandered or used inappropriately. On the other hand if you have good values, you will be able to cope with life’s circumstances and be able to cope and share your burden with others.

Simple life is simple. It can be satisfying. But it’s dull a times. You do the right thing, but the wrong thing is what can add excitement. I’m not suggesting socking away $$$s isn’t great and gratifying besides. But there’s nothing quite like just going out there and doing whatever the hell you want, just because you can. And that’s what American culture has sold us all. The myth that we can have it all, do it all now and pay for it some other time.

Mortgage is better than rent. You’re ahead of the game. So pay off all your extraneous loans and maybe stop being so good for a couple of days. Except instead of using your credit card, dip into the funds and go out and do something ridiculous, buy a couple of stupid things you’ll regret buying. Look at them for a couple of days, think about your life, sweat the expense and THEN take them back. What the hell.

I am dreaming of new living room furniture.

It sounds like the mortgage is what’s really getting you down. The 2 years for the student loans is in the long-but-foreseeable time frame. I would focus on that. Shove the mortgage repayment to the back of your mind. It’s still a goal, but not one that needs your attention at the moment.

Milestones are just that, markers along the road of life to show us that we are still alive and with the human race. More importantly is the ideology,”that life is not a problem to be solve yet an adventure to be lived.”(~Anthony Robbins)You are on the right path and a head of the crowd in terms of attitude and financial well-being. Take the time to enjoy the ride while keeping your eye on the prize.

fyi, 40 is the new 30. :)

Thanks for sharing your frustrations, Trent. I know it’s not easy to be vulnerable in public, but the perspective helps us all think about our own journeys.

Even after looking at the numbers, I still know it was all worth it.

Gross pay $100,000
current debt $186,661.66

percent of gross income to savings 7.30%
percent of gross income to debt 28.00%
ideal retirement savings goal 20.00%
current retirement percent 5.00%
minimum debt required in 4 years 13.00%

Right now, I am not paying that aggressively on the loans. I am trying to pay off a credit card that is %interest until June. Then I will have another $600 available to snowball. Also, in 4 years one of my tiny loans will be gone.

Currently my required debt payment is 21% of gross. In 4 years, even thought the required % will drop to 13%, I still plan on allocating 28% to debt.

One of the loans, currently at $98,000 will be gone in 10 years, and the other loan at $77,000 should be gone in 15 years.

I feel your pain. But I have set up an excel progress sheet that keeps me motivated and show my progress. My loans kicked in last June. Before that I was able to save $20,000 for a wedding, $10,000 for a honeymoon. I paid off a $2500 credit card in June and another $2500 card in December.

The little bulk payments keep me going. My next payment is due in June, then I plan on saving $3000 to open a Vanguard IRA. After that, I’m sure I will find another goal to focus on.

Before I dug this hole, I expected to be using 30% less of my salary due to loans. But I am so much better off now. I feel financially independent (priceless). I know that if we need extra money, it’s there, I just have to decrease the extra payments for a while. The sense of security really makes it worth it. And in 15 years when the debt is gone, I will essentially have a sweet raise.

The savings % listed is only mine. My husband is saving aggressively for a downpayment for a future home, and together, we are saving at least $1800 per month.

Time goes faster the older you get. Remember when you were a little kid and one hour seemed like the better part of a lifetime? Now an hour hardly seems like enough time to get a thing done. Well, that phenomenon persists throughout your life. I think it’s because we perceive time in terms of the proportion of our existence it occupies.

Consider nine years. It’s 31 percent of a 29-year-old man’s lifetime–almost a THIRD of your life. But when you’re 39, it will represent only 23 percent of the time you will have spent on this earth; at 60, it will be just 15 percent. Trust me: when you’re 40 years old, nine years will not seem like much time, and two years will feel like it passed in the blinking of a gnat’s eye.

Psychologically, debt is something that bothers you. That’s a good reason to be rid of it, no matter what anyone else thinks. I paid off my house over the squawks of one of my financial advisers, and it was the smartest thing I ever did. The payment absorbed half my salary, and I could not live on half of a college instructor’s income. The absence of the alleged mortgage deduction made exactly zero difference in my taxes. When the debt was paid off, I had plenty of cash flow to live on, and a substantial part of it went into savings.

If you are actually free of debt and still married at the age of forty, you will have another 20 to 30 years in which to squirrel away savings from two people’s income streams for retirement. Better 20 years of house payments should go into your mutual funds than 30 years of payments go into some mortgager’s pocket.