Mortgage Payoff Progress for December 2012 with Chart

My wife and I moved in to our new home in February of 2010.

We have a conventional, fixed-rate, 15-year mortgage.  We recently reduced the interest rate on our mortgage.

Our goal is to pay it off our mortgage in less than ten total years.

As of December, we have made 33 regular, monthly mortgage payments.

We have also made several additional principal-only payments.

Our mortgage payment is drafted from our primary checking on the first day of each month. Additional principal-only payments are made throughout each month, as we earn additional income and find ways to decrease budgeted-for expenses.

Here is our most recent chart –

The chart shows two percentages:

The blue percentage is how much I still owe – the balance.

The red percentage is how much I have reduced – the paid.

Now that we have lowered the interest rate on our mortgage, a larger percentage of our regular monthly payment will go towards principal, which rocks. Also, if we continue to make our old payment, we’ll pay of our mortgage even sooner, which rocks, too!

We are still sending extra, principal-only micro-payments.

Unlike credit card companies, our mortgage provider does not apply micro-payments throughout the month.  Payments are processed on a single day.  We believe in  a “hands-on” approach to debt reduction.

This chart does not represent how much of my house I actually “own”. It simply reflects how much of our mortgage balance we have paid.

We have made 33 regular payments and have lived in the house for a little more than two years. Our contractual remaining term is 12 years and 3 months, but our actual remaining term is 11 years and 10 months. We have reduced the length of our mortgage by 5 months!

View all post related to our mortgage payoff progress.

Side note:  Our goal is to own our home, mortgage-free.  Home prices in our rural section of the country have remained relatively stable and anecdotal evidence (prices of similar homes which have recently sold near ours) would indicate that the value of our home has increased, slightly, over the past couple of years.