JC> We bought "down" when we sold the "ranch" and paid cash for our current
  > house. We purposely waited until two days after I turned 55 to avoid 
capita
  > gains taxes.
Good move!
JC> We had to come up with thousands for the balance of my heart surgeries 
nd
  > other complications. Just went "without" until that was all paid off. We 
no
  > only "borrow" from ourselves through my 401K which means not only is the
  > interest paid to "us", but it is all "pre-tax" income. Saves a _bundle_ 
n
  > our income taxes.
We're trying to keep our expenditures low.  Things keep happening
though, so they don't stay as low as we want.  A few days ago we woke
up to the sound of the furnace rumbling very loudly.  We called our
friendly furnace fixer, and he fixed it, for a price of course.  But at
least it's not rumbling at us anymore.
JC> I always like to dazzle people (like my kids) with an amortization 
rogram
  > that will not only tell you how much you can save, but how much sooner 
your
  > loan will be paid off just by paying five or ten dollars more on each 
payme
When we compared the 15 and 30 year mortgages on our house (and opted
for the 15), we discovered we would pay a *whole lot* less in terms of
total money spent, and still not spend a whole lot more money on each
monthly payment.  It seemed worth it at the time (and still does).
There were ten year mortgages available, but none of them had fixed
interest rates, and we weren't about to get caught up in flexible rates.
Flexible rates *might* work to our benefit, but they could just as
easily work to our detriment.
                     Sondra
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 þ SLMR 2.1a þ Wild men who caught and sang the Sun in flight.  DT
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