Well thanks everyone...I enjoyed sharing it. Its really nice to have someone (s) :-) to share your thoughts and feelings with! Mary, Im not sure because my photo album is a little out of order now. Would you believe we took 350 pictures while in England? LOL! Anyway, some of the pictures got out of sequence, but I think the picture you are asking about is either the Cotswolds or from Cheltenham? I love England. It really felt like a 2nd home to me...the people there are truly the nicest and most genuine Ive ever met. I hope to get the chance to go back some day. Funny too, my dad would always said that the one bright spot while serving in the war was when he was stationed in England. He loved the people there and always told us how kind and friendly they were to the young soldiers so far from home. He was always so grateful for that. :-) I wish he would have had the chance to visit there again during peace time, but after the war dad refused to fly anymore. Yes Woody, I dont always succeed either, but I tell my self its good to have a goal! :-) And you are right PM, actually, that is why I write down/save the things that touch me because I "forget" and it helps me get back on track and inspires me when I need a lift. Marian...it is a lot of work, but if you ever did decide to do it I know it would be something the girls would cherish forever. Im sure you have some wonderful stories and important memories to share with them. Ei

draconisskye - Your comments have reinforced my opinion that reducing our mortgage load ASAP really is in our best interests. Given your situation, I think you are very right. 110k first mortgage @ 6.00% fixed (25 years remaining) 17k second mortgage @ 7.85% fixed (9 years remaining) ...We bought the house 4 years ago for 156k and currently owe 137k. You know something? You may be able to get out of that 2nd mortgage quicker than you think. If you paid $156K for the house and values in your area have gone up, then you could very well be beyond the ratio for requiring PMI, which is why you took out the 80/20 (I presume). It may be in your best interest to get the house appraised to see how much it has grown. Right now with both your mortgages, you are at 13% of the original value. With a higher appraisal, it could very well take you over 20% and then allow you to refi into one single mortgage. You could also pay down the amount that will take you down to 20% without tapping too much into your savings. You would still owe $137K, but it would be in one mortgage, lower interest rate and smaller overall payments, thus saving thousands and thousands in interest. Crunching the numbers, all you would need is an appraisal of $165K (approx). Alternatively, you could pay down your 2nd by $7K to take your total amount owing to 130K and with the amount you paid ($156K), you would be under 80% - enough to qualify for no PMI and a single mortgage refinance. If the value has increased, you would need less than $7K to do it. However, there are closing costs associated with that, but there are lenders offering no closing costs right now. Without paying it off entirely, you do have some alternatives to get out from under this. Your situation is one that is a very good example of why taking an 80/20 to avoid PMI can bite you in the bum in the future. It costs so much more in interest than it's really worth. People don't know that they can pay the PMI outright in full at closing. That saves thousands in interest over the life of the loan. So, first step - get an appraisal. Then crunch the numbers. By law, the lender must remove PMI when you owe less than 80% of the VALUE of the home, not what you paid. And like someone mentioned upthread, your 2nd may not be as high as 17K, so you could be close to the needed ratio already without even knowing it, so get the payoff numbers too. HTH!

I think most people in this thread are emphasizing that even though we own, from a purely financial perspective, typically owning is not the best financial decision. We realize that about ourselves and acknowledge we own homes for different reasons such as pride of ownership, not having to deal with landlords, etc. Housing doesn't decrease in value like, say, cars do. But housing typically gains value, on average, at a small rate, much smaller than investing in the stock market. The weird thing to wrap your head around is that, from an economic perspective, even a slight gain feels like a loss if you know you could be making a bigger gain somewhere else. The nest egg I have sitting in my house wants to get bigger. And from the egg's perspective, it knows it could be doubling a lot faster if I had it put somewhere else besides my house. That pain my nest egg feels by missing an opportunity to make even more of itself is called an opportunity cost. So even though my nest egg isn't getting smaller while it's sitting around in my house, it knows it could be getting a lot bigger if I had it somewhere else. The difference in returns between investing a chunk of money in a house and investing it in the stock market is so great that for most people, it more than makes the difference compared to the monthly out of pocket cost of renting. And actually the bigger the nest egg you had at the beginning (down payment) the more sense it would make to rent, because you'd be able to put more money to work for you sooner, covering even more of the rental costs. It takes a special person to be so financially prudent that they choose the wise financial decision over the emotional decision even when it comes to something so fundamental as where you live. Those people do exist, and they'll be retiring early and thumbing their noses at me from their suite balcony on their cruise ship as I keep whittling away at my job until I'm 70. This financially prudent person might not own a car and doesn't eat out a lot. Wine is right out for the most part. They lift weights at home instead of the gym. Their cell phone might still have push buttons. Their low cost lifestyle doesn't need a giant nest-egg to support it when they retire, so they're able to retire earlier. But the trade-off for being tighter than a gnat's butt is that they have increased freedom and financial independence and they accumulate wealth much quicker. They're the ant instead of the grasshopper. The person Pal described is a grasshopper. And sad to say, I'm probably closer to a grasshopper than an ant. But my father in law is a super ant so I get the best of both worlds. Governments have typically encouraged home ownership through social policy. However there is little overall evidence that high rates of home ownership are a social good. Indeed 2008 showed us that there are many people who wanted to own homes that likely should have been renters. For a good overview of the pros and cons of encouraging home ownership through public policy: http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/882 To note, many very successful countries have very low rates of home ownership. In fact Switzerland and Germany have the lowest rates of ownership in the OECD, while Lithuania and Romania have the highest. Singapore has the third highest at 90% home ownership but they also have a unique view of government involvement in the housing market. 80% of the population lives in publicly built and funded housing.

Both of my grandparents stayed at home until they were in their late 80's and then Mama had no choice but to put them into a nursing home. My GF lived about 3 years after and my GM is still living. She turned 100 in Sept. She has very good care and is the favorite in the home. She has a double room and has been lucky for the most part about room-mates but she has had a couple that were a chore to deal with. When they retired they had a substantial amount of savings and their home with a few acres of land. We hired one of the home health aides to come spend the night with them for a few months but were paying out about $300 a week and all she was doing was sleeping there. Anyway now my GM has been in the home for about 13 years and all of her money is gone. She gets $30 a month and goes to the beauty shop in the home once a week and the family pays for her TV and phone and any other things she needs. Her money was building up in her account and they told my sister that we needed to spend some of it because she wasn't allowed to have but a certain amount and she was over the limit. Family members moved into their home for a few years and then when it was vacated we sold it and the money went to the home. We had no problem with that. They've taken good care of her and know they will continue to. The main point is that people save their money for their old age and then when they get their and need it for health care the other family members often think it should be theirs. Yes, we've paid taxes most of our lives but nobody can live on the amount of taxes you pay in for a month. Probably the best solution would be to go back to many years ago where extended families just built onto the family home and the kids stayed after marriage and were there to help care for the elderly family members (great-grandparents) and the grandparents are there to baby sit for the grandchildren. Thus cutting out a lot of expenses. Of course we've gone away from this custom for too many years for most to want to do it. G'nite John-Boy! lol Nancy