If you have viewed our family's net worth, you probably already know that it does not include the equity in our home. Although, we do realize that it is technically part of our overall net worth, we decided that since our home equity is not an asset that we can count on for income (unless we sell and buy something cheaper) we would exclude it from our net worth calculation.
For the purpose of this blog, we are more interested in documenting our loan balance rather than our home equity. With that said, we will use the current Zillow value as our estimated home value and use it to figure out the percentage we owe on our home. For those interested, we will include the amount of our home equity, but know that we are less concerned with the equity since we have no plans to cash out or otherwise sell our home. Our main goal is to pay off our home on or before my retirement date.
According to Zillow, our home is currently worth: $746,101
Mortgage Balance (May 2014): $348,781.81
Percentage Owed: 46.7%
Home Equity: $397,319.19
For those that have not read the Preface on our home equity, we currently hold a 15-year fixed rate mortgage at the incredibly low rate of 2.875%. My goal is to retire within 13 1/2 years so we are setting out to pay off our mortgage on or before my retirement date. We reached a significant milestone this past month...More than 2/3 of our mortgage payment is now going towards the principal in our loan. That means less than 1/3 of our mortgage is going towards interest. Woohoo!
Wow, great job on paying down so much of the mortgage already! Safe to say you've seen some hefty appreciation gains off of this one?
ReplyDeleteThanks...But having a 2.875% APR certainly is a big factor. At this point, we are not paying extra towards the principal but will consider doing so if or when my wife goes back to work.
DeleteWe've made approx. $26K in 5 years...not great, but considering our home lost close to $100K during the first 2 years, I'm just happy to be back near our purchase price.