Refinancing My Mortgage After Two Years and Saving $48 per month

This is an article that I am very excited to write.  And I owe a huge thank you to Lanny for helping me make it happen.  Ever since the rate cut in July, we have all been bombarded with emails asking us to refinance our mortgage.  “Why you need to refinance with Quicken Loans.”  “You’ve been pre-approved with Chase.”  Even Ally Bank, where we have both held our investment portfolios at one time, offered us a sweet refinance deal.

With an interest rate of 3.89% on a 30-year mortgage originated two years ago, I never thought that refinancing would work for me.  But as interest rates continued to slide and the refinance market exploded, rates finally reached the level where it was economically beneficial for me to make the move.  Here is why I am refinancing my mortgage after two years and unlocking some serious cash along the way.

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Why We’re Finally Maximizing our 401k Contributions in 2018

Fresh off of a record-setting December in terms of dividend income, I’m ready to hit the ground running in 2018 and make some serious moves.  Now that we are comfortably moved into our house and our cash outflows to make repairs and upgrades are shrinking drastically, we should have a lot of additional cash flow available for use in 2018.   After brainstorming what the most efficient use of the capital would be, I realized there is an easy change that I need to make with my finances.   Like Lanny over the past few years, my wife and I are finally taking the steps necessary to maximize our 401k contributions during the year!

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A Call to Action: It is Time to Pay Off My Debt!

Lanny and I are constantly writing about our pursuit of financial freedom.  We invest every dollar and spend every extra minute we can side-hustling to allow us to break the shackles of the 9-5 (or in our case 7 – 6) jobs to pursue our dreams and focus on what makes us happiest in life.  The dividend and side hustle income will allow us to cover our regular living expenses, take the pressures of working to cover these expenses, and unlock those shackles that are holding us back.  That’s how you take back the control of your life.   Today, I’m going to take a deep dive into one of the largest areas of my personal balance sheet.  No, I’m not focusing on the assets for once.  Rather, I am going to pull back the layers of our debt and discuss my plan for reducing my outstanding obligations taking back control of my personal balance sheet.

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How Traveling for Work Led to an Unexpected Housing Expense

I feel like I am just stuck in a rut right now.   A lot of exciting things are going on at the moment, and I know that I should be enjoying them.  We finally closed on our house and the title is in our name.  The thought of home-ownership was at one point a dream and now it is a reality.   Now the projects begin.  We have an apartment to pack, wallpaper to tear down, walls to pain, hardwood floors to re-finish, and other projects that will emerge at the blink of an eye.   This should be fun; this should be exciting.  But something feels off right now as I write this article from my hotel room.  After sitting at the same looking desk that I have sat at so many times at every Hampton Inn in “you name it” city, it finally it me.  The reason I am feeling off right now is not because of the volume of work that has to be done on my house, but rather, the fact that I will be traveling a lot for work over the next few months  is having negative impact on my ability to complete these projects and even worse, my savings account.

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Fears of Being a First Time Homeowner

My wife and I just purchased a house…it is still settling in.  I can’t believe I am taking the plunge into home ownership.  This is the largest asset we ever purchased, and it most likely will be the largest one for the remainder of our life.  Last week, I tried to give an in depth account of the purchase in an article. Some of our frustrations, how we stumbled on our house, and the bidding/acceptance process.  At the end of the article, I left a cliff hanger about some of the parts of being a first time homeowner that I am still struggling with.

pay down the mortgage or invest

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Holy $%!? We Bought a House

Today is another chapter in the Dividend Diplomats mortgage series.   Time flies and surprises pop up where you least expect them.  I’ve written a lot about my house hunt recently, starting with reasons why my wife and I were not in a hurry to purchase a house all the way to the process of finding the institution that will provide us with the best mortgage.   We were always told that lightning strikes and when you find the right house, you need to move quickly.  Well, that was the case here and I could not believe how quickly things moved.  In all honesty, I’m a little shocked about it all here and I’m still finding myself trying to process what went down.  Mostly happy, with some doubts (as always), but her is the story about how my wife and I found our house.   I’m going to have a two-part series about this process – one about the purchase and one about some of my emotions/feelings after the offer was accepted.  So here is Part 1 of my mini-series!

pay down the mortgage or invest

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