Happy New Year To All My Blog Friends!!

Happy New Year Everyone!

Your support meant so much to me in 2008. I am looking forward to a fabulous 2009!

So, it looks like we are planning to try to refinance our home mortgage and our home equity loan. We are hoping to refinance to a 15 year mortgage, which is how much we currently have left on our 20 year mortgage. We are hoping to borrow $240,000, which is currently how much we owe on our mortgage and our home equity loan combined. We are hoping to get an interest rate of 4%, which is even better than our current interest rate of 5.25%.

I found this rate on line and am looking into it. We will have to pay 1 point (about $2,400 I think) and come up with closing costs (about $1,000 I think). This will bring our savings balance down to $1,500 which does make me a little nervous, but I think this is the right thing for us to do.

We will then be debt free except for the home mortgage (which does feel a little bit like cheating since the home equity loan won't actually be paid off, just rolled into our mortgage). And our monthly mortgage payment will go down by $150, and we will no longer need to make payments on our equity loan - so that will save us another $100 a month.

And, we can get right to saving our Fully Funded Emergency Fund. (Oh how I can't wait to be on Baby Step 3!) Our goal for the FFEF is $30,000. On paper, it looks like it will take us 2 years to save this amount, but I am hoping we will acomplish it sooner. My oldest daughter is 12 and we NEED to start saving for her for college!

Anyway, this is where we are at right now.

Feeling hopeful for the New Year and wishing you all the best!