Friday, May 16, 2008

Spiders and Home Mortgages

These are the topics at hand right now. Well...there are others...but these two may be considered "blog worthy."

Does anyone else think dead spiders are more creepy than live ones? Seriously. Karen and I were just talking. I was at the computer and she was in the reading chair. I looked down and in between us was a clump of yarn. But as I looked closer, I could tell legs were curled. And THAT's what's creepy. Partly because you never know if the spider is kidding or not. But curled up legs are pretty creepy. If spiders didn't have legs, I don't think I would mind them so much.

Mortgages. In our current environment when people are walking away from their homes and leaving them in dissaray (i.e.: taking faucets and parts of appliances and anything else they may sell or use elsewhere) you'd think that mortgage companies would welcome proactive customers willing to pay their bill early. Karen and I wanted to to pay our mortgage bi-weekly. Statistics show that it will shave years off the life of the loan. Instead, our friendly mortgage company wrote us and said, "We are currently holding your payment. In order for us to apply the unapplied funds to your Mortgage account, you must make your payment in full."

Oh. But they're willing to do it for us if we pay a $500 fee. Phooey on them. Perhaps I'll call them on Monday and ask them if they'd rather have a proactive customer willing to pay regularly or if I should join those who trash their house and walk away. I wonder which customer they prefer? :)

I'm off to read the contract...

**UPDATE** I read the contract and IT DOES, in fact, state that the lender is not obligated to apply a partial payment. But...it doesn't say they can't. I can be persuasive...

5 comments:

John said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John said...

There are web articles about paying mortgages early -- it is interesting that they show that it is sometimes more advantageous to not pay off early.

Laurel said...

hmmm...you deleted a comment? Was it something talldad said?

Okay, first, saying spiders wouldn't be as scary w/o legs is like saying a psycho killer wouldn't be as scary w/o being a killer. I don't know why that so made me laugh out loud, but it did.

Oh, and I love that you said, "phooey". You are SO your dad!

Wendy said...

We had a similar situation. We decided to set up, because we could, to pay an extra $5 a month, moving up to $10 in a few months.....that will shave off about 5 years, with just the $5 extra. Now, our mortgage co would accept payments bi-monthly, but there again, there was a large fee attached. Then I read in my Discover financial newsletter that doing it yourself is just as easy, it only takes a little control. So, we, bi-monthly, transfer half the payment into our savings account (accruing interest on the way--our interest) and then the payment is debited from that account. So we utilize our monies for the longest period we can and still shave off years of our mortgage! It works for us. Look into it.

Anonymous said...

a spider without legs would be one of those little roly poly bugs. and they are cute. I agree with you.