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Archive for January, 2012

Refinance approved

January 23rd, 2012 at 02:56 am

Around the beginning of the year, I decided to refinance my house. I did look around at rates and found that I could get as low as 3.75% for a 20-year mortgages, but I actually ended up with a 4% loan, staying with my current mortgage company (and bank), Wells Fargo. They waived all the closing costs so it was actually cheaper this way.

So I cut my rate from 5.875% to 4%, and I cut my loan term from 24 years remaining on a 30-year mortgage to a 20-year mortgage, and I *still* will save about $50/month on the payment--pretty sweet.

I'll start putting that extra $50/month into retirement after I get my other debt closed out. No, I won't put it into the mortgage because I want to be more diversified.

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This weekend was a quiet one (most are). It snowed yesterday, so I stayed in and spent much of the day reading. Today I spent reviewing my notes from a year ago on doing S-Corp returns. Now that I'm actually DOING them, things make more sense.

I also did a fair amount of cooking over the weekend...trying to make sure that I have food prepared for the coming week, because I'm very unlikely to cook mid-week. Yesterday, I made a nice tofu-veggie stirfry that I served over Kashi pilaf for lunch, and turkey burgers for dinner. Today, I roasted a butternut squash and cooked up a pound of swiss chard and made baked apples (plus had one of the turkey burgers) for lunch, and made a big pot of "stuffed cabbage soup" (similar ingredients to stuffed cabbage., just in soup form) for dinner.

We've finally turned the corner on mornings getting light earlier (though still it's well after 7 before the sun is really out), and it's staying light til after 5. The dark is really making me feel sleepy early this year, and I'm just not productive once it's dark. I'm looking forward to having more light soon.