Background:
— Me: 34F, salary $94,000 — Husband: 35M, salary $60,000 — We live in Alabama and have two young kids. — Bought a new house in June for $355,000. We were able to sell our old house for $100k over what we paid for it in 2018 so netted $103,000 in profit after all closing costs, etc. We did a recast on our new mortgage and put an additional $54,000 toward the principal to get to our 20% equity to wipe out PMI and lower our payment. The recast is still pending but once it goes through, our mortgage payment will be ~$2200 (damn you, 7.25% interest rate 😭). — I just paid cash for a used Honda Pilot and plan to sell my 2019 CX-5 to get rid of having a car payment. — Once I get rid rid of the CX-5 we will have no debt other than the mortgage.
My question is, should I take the $400 a month I was paying on my car payment and apply it to extra principal payments on the mortgage each month or invest it some other way? I know we can save a ton of interest and shave years off our mortgage by paying extra but this is probably not going to be our forever home (we will probably live here for about 5-7 years) so does it make sense to sink extra money into it? Will I see a return on investment if we sell after 5 years? Just trying to get the best bang for my buck in this terrible economy…
We also have about $30,000 leftover profit from our home sale that I would feel comfortable tying up in investments if there is something that would give us a good return.
I’ve been on maternity leave since June so had a lot of time on my hands to think about our finances. I also canceled our T-Mobile plan ($160/month) and switched us to Mint Mobile ($40/month), lowered our internet bill from $80/month to $20/month, and canceled most of our monthly subscriptions/memberships.
Submitted August 29, 2023 at 10:46PM by alwystred https://ift.tt/ArxuLRI
