about poverty - how poor have you been, as an adult?

[hfojvt]

7. well, it is only a $35,000 house

I put $7,000 down on it and financed $28,000 closing in November 2001 with a 5-1 ARM at 5.5%. For some reason my first payment was not due until January 1. At the time, I was making about $26,000 a year. I figured that in 5 years I would make $130,000. If I could not pay off $28,000 in debt out of that, there was something wrong. My first payment was $1661.95 and my second was $1138.04. Then I got fired. On unemployment I was still able to pay $292.42 and $223.2 and $382.36 and $260.12 amd $260.65 through August until I got another job (I am reading this off the spreadsheet I kept, not remembering these amounts). The part-time job barely paid as much as unemployment but somehow I paid $1990.08 in October 2002.

Some of that payment money may have been borrowed. And I still think that is a funny story. My credit card was constantly sending me offers for balance transfers. One I had was for 3.9% for the life of the loan. Since I was working in credit card customer service I learned that I could just request a check. So they sent me a check for $2,000 which I then paid on my mortgage. Effectively I was being paid 1.6% to borrow that money. Ultimately I maxed out that credit card (to about $4,000) and paid the credit card off early too since 3.9% was still more than my savings account was paying. The funniest part was that my employer and my credit card company and my mortgage holder - were all the same company. A company which paid me 1.6% to borrow money (dang, if only I could have borrowed $500,000 at that rate).

Once I started working full time in May 2004, then I could make some much bigger payments and clearly I had some fun, paying $2,222.22 in May, and $1,111.11 in June and $888.88 in July. But after a $1500 payment in December, for some reason I made smaller payments in 2005. Maybe savings account rates were better or I was putting money in IRAs to save on taxes. But then I made two large paymens in September and October 2005 to finish it off. I figure I saved $2,107.46 in interest by paying ahead just for the four years I paid on it.

Heck, if I had followed their amortization schedule, I would have paid $1,164.44 in interest last year alone. Having saved at least that much over the last seven years puts me $8,151 ahead.