At the end of September, our remaining balance is at 29.84% of our original mortgage that we took out in 2007. That’s a reduction of .64%.

How much longer?

Once all of September’s payments are applied, we’ll have reduced our mortgage balance by about $870 this month. We didn’t reach $40k like we had hoped by October 1. We’ve made some temporary adjustments to our payoff schedule that I’ll explain below. Right now, we’ve got 42 payments left with the adjustments we made. That means our mortgage will be paid off on April 1, 2021.

You might be wondering why the extension in time and increase in the number of payments. Essentially, we’re preparing for a potential transition in the future. We don’t know all the details on what it will be yet, but we’re preparing anyhow. One way of preparing is by piling up some extra cash. Once we’re through this time, we’ll take all the extra and apply it back to the mortgage. At that point, it will hopefully wipe out the rest of the mortgage or get us very close. For that reason, our large payments will be reduced for the next several months.

Budget Series

I’ll be continuing the series that covers our budget. The next category we’ll be covering is clothing. How much do you spend on clothing each month? What all does clothing cover? It sounds like an easy one, but we include some items in that category you may not think about.

Photo by Got Credit