Satisfaction. . . .

In November, I sent a grand total of $1,452 to my second mortgage holder, which is $1,197 more than I usually pay each month. There's definitely some satisfaction in watching my balance decrease, since up until now I've been primarily paying interest-only (I wasn't aware that this was akin to an interest-only loan when I signed the papers, by the way, though if I'd been a smarter consumer I would have learned that beforehand).

What amazes me is that in the four years that I've had this loan, I've managed to pay it down by just around $1,500. I'm flabbergasted by this.

October, 2006 starting balance: $31,400
November 2008 balance: $30,877.76
November 2010 balance: $29,881.18*

* Note: this doesn't reflect all the payments that I made in November, since some of my paychecks came late in the month.

Know what's even crazier? My November 2010 balance reflects an additional $400 in principle payments that month! So, essentially, the balance of my second mortgage has only decreased by about $1100 in four years of making regular payments!

With financing like this, it's no wonder some American homeowners are in such deep doo-doo. Loans like this remind me of indentured servitude, in which a peasant was obligated to a wealthy landowner (or other wealthy individual) until he died, because the value of his work on the land (which he didn't own) was never enough to cover the amount of his debt to the aforementioned landowner.

Anyway, this is just a rather long-winded way of saying that the satisfaction of finally watching the balance of this evil loan shrink is hard to describe. Perhaps it's akin to watching the pounds on the scale vanish with weight loss, or, conversely, watching the balance of a savings account grow exponentially. In short, it's FANTASTIC!!