If you pay $90,000 on your mortgage, you stand to save:

1) About $4,950 a year in interest on the $90,000 (6.5% curent mortgage rate less say 1% earned on it now in savings)

2) About $5,360 a year in interest on the remaining $268,000 mortgage, assuming your rate would drop to 4.5%.

So $10,310 total annual return on $90,000 is over 11% and will earn itself back in less than 9 years. (This doesn’t account for loan costs, but I’m assuming those won’t be much.)

With $160,000 in retirement savings, and assuming you are living well within your substantial means, I’d be less concerned than Trent about whether you have enough of an emergency fund.

The only countervailing thought is that with your “underwater” mortgage and the current “bailout anything that moves” climate, you may not qualify for some future government subsidy/gimmick if you actually acquire some equity in your home. It’s a safe assumption that all such programs will strictly exclude anyone who acted responsibly in managing their debt. Still, chances are that at your income levels, you might be excluded anyway, so might as well do what makes sense.

If the situation is that Ronald really doesn’t want TV and his wife does, it might make sense for her to pay for part of the bill herself. Maybe just enough that she’s regularly evaluating whether or not she still wants it. If she does — great. If other things turn out to be more important to her, so be it. It does need to be a decision they’re both on board with, though, otherwise it would just breed resentment.

I bring a cucumber to work every day and in the afternoon I slice it and eat it like chips. It has the crunch and satisfies my hunger.

Veggies are! Try keeping cut up carrots, celery, bell peppers, zucchini around!

From personal experience, this can develop into an obsession which end up devoting all your time to the lists, rather than actually getting things done. While there were other issues, this ultimately led to the suicide of my father almost 25 years ago – and that was pre-spheadsheets!!!

Try and restrict re-prioritising to once a week or less, and instead devote this time to actioning items from the list. Ideally target things you can complete in this time each day, to get some quick wins, reduce the list length and importantly for your own positive motivation and self-esteem. Good luck!

I’d add The Moth, On Being (krista tippett), and maybe the splendid table if you are into food/cooking. But it really depends on your interests.

Otherwise, you’re right and these sites become a losing game.

The easiest way to get started generating money from ads is to use Google Adsense. Just sign up for an Adsense account, create an ad then insert it on the blog. There are undoubtedly some how-to and step-by-step guides available on the process. The details of how to insert the ad on your blog will depend on what blog software you use.

You might also ask if you can a 80/10/10 or “piggy back” financing. I’m not sure how common that is nowadays but worth asking about maybe. If you did that you’d get a mortgage for 80%, put 10% down and then a 2nd mortgage for 10%. The 2nd mortgage would be higher interest so you’d want to pay it off faster, but it would avoid PMI and not empty your savings.