I want to share my MMA experience. When we first started on this program, we had a 1st mortgage ($950/month) and a fixed rate heloc ($550/month). We do not make a ton of money and with 2 kids these pmts were tight. We put everything extra we had onto the heloc to get that pmt down for some relief. At the start of MMA we had gotten the balance down to under 10K however, we cut everything out of our lives…no extra’s. We did still contribute to our other accounts (retirement, savings, rainy day) just on a much smaller level. We refi’d the heloc to qualify. MMA automatically took that pmt out of our budget. We gave the bank our entire income (less contributions) and they only wanted the interest, so we no longer felt that tightness. It took very little time to pay that off. We still owed the $, but it “paid itself” down in a sense because of where we put our $. We put down new carpet last year and charged it on a Lowe’s card at 0%. We were paying $150/month on that. Paid it off with the heloc and no longer had that pmt. Within several months we had paid all of our other debts off and were left with the mortgage and our regular bills. We did not have a lot of debt, so it may not go this quickly for some, but it was such a relief! At that point MMA started prompting us to transfer a large amt to our first. We had 28 years left on our mortgage and are now on track to pay it off in 8.75 years. That’s almost 20 years early!!! And we can verify everything by comparing our MMA to our mortgage statement. Plus, this is our second home and when we bought this we held onto our first home and turned it into a rental. Once this is paid, we can then pay off the rental on the same MMA. I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I am more focused and driven toward the end results than ever before. I can actually see progress and it is so motivating.
Tags: united first financial