Before you read this post you have to promise not to laugh at my lack of financial prowess.  I’m a reasonably intelligent person who is more inclined towards the liberal arts than the sciences – or economics evidently.  I think I have a general grasp of how loans and interest works.  It was with extreme anxiety that I signed the seven thousand pages (rough estimate) of mortgage documents years ago.  It was just what you did – you bought a house.

Over the last many months, I have come to be at peace with my house.  It’s not my dream, but we are making it so.  I’m excited about our current home improvement projects and I’m very happy with my mortgage payment (especially considering the area we live in).

But yesterday, as I was paying bills and working on our debt payoff, I got discouraged.  Budgets are so black and white…okay, and red sometimes.  Paying off our credit and medical debt is taking forever it seems.

And then I started looking around the bank site that holds our mortgage information.  Sigh.  I’ll be in my eighties when our mortgage is paid off.  Honestly, maybe dead.  Talk about discouraging.

And then I saw this little section called “Early payoff calculator”.  Yea, right.  I’m barely making progress on our other debts.

But, what the hell.  Turns out that if I pay only $5 extra a month on our principal, I can pay off our mortgage two years earlier.  What?  Really?  Are they kidding?  I entered the numbers a million more times.  Same answer.

Now, I’m learning a lot more about mortgages and paying them off.  My head hurts.  I don’t like math.  I really don’t like math.  At all.  But, I do like getting out of debt.

So, I’ve given up my Sonic Drive-In unsweet tea with blackberry.  I started drinking it to quit drinking Diet Coke after my health scare a year or so ago.

I love my tea.

But I had no idea that $5 was that powerful.

Water is tasting pretty good right now!