We bought our house in December 2007, and from the first payment in January 2008, we’ve committed to one little step that we think will eventually make the difference.  It takes discipline, but it’s so simple at the same time: round it up, we say.  From day one, we’ve rounded up our mortgage to the next hundred.  The additional amount ends up being fairly small compared to our total payment, but it’s definitely changing the outlook of our loan.

Like many mortgages, ours is a 30-year, fixed rate loan.  If nothing changes, making this small additional payment each month will knock 5 years and about $28,000 in interest off the life of the loan. (Want to figure out what a change like this will do to your mortgage? We used the mortgage calculator at DaveRamsey.com.)

Now, here’s where things start to get really crazy.  Let’s say we spread that $28,000 over the 25-year life of the loan.  That’s about $93 per month that’s now available for investing.  Yeah, it will be smaller in the beginning and become larger as the amounts amortize, but for the sake of argument, let’s say we invested that in mutual funds over the 25 years.  If the fund averaged about 8% over those 25 years, it would be worth somewhere around $175,000 at the end of the loan.  (Oh yeah, Dave’s got an investing calculator, too!)

Okay, so this is a really basic way of looking at things, but it gets at a really important point.  The more aggressive you are about paying down your house, the more you are going to be able to make your money work for you in the long run.  We do plan to move at some point, and unless we are really fortunate, we’ll need to get another mortgage.  We’ll go with a 15-year, fixed rate loan, and we will pay it off as quickly as possible.  In the meantime, any extra principle we pay on this loan is well worth it!
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Photo Credit: wwworks // Creative Commons

Recently we lauded the virtues of using Mint for managing our financial accounts and transactions.  And while we still think it’s a tremendous tool, we’ve also been reminded of an important truth: you do get what you pay for (in this case, we pay nothing).

We use a local credit union for the majority of our financial life and when Mint finally claimed support for it, we were ecstatic.  At last, the opportunity to manage our finances “in the cloud”!  No more slugging through Quicken for Mac 2007, .qfx file imports, and the like.  Purchase decisions could be made on the fly, at the store, at the time of doing business.  But it was not to be.

Recently I came up against  an error when I went to manually update (a requirement) our credit union’s account on Mint.

It told me, “give it another try, hopefully it will work this time” (paraphrased).  No luck.

Then, “no really, give us another chance, we have a good feeling about this” (also paraphrased).

And then finally, “hey, why don’t you click this link, head back to your bank, and make sure you’ve got everything correct.”  Really?  You think somehow in this I’m unsure of my username and password?  Again, no luck.

To their credit, a representative from our credit union saw my post on the Mint support forums and gave me some suggestions on how I might rectify the situation.  I followed their recommendation, and submitted a direct support request to Mint.  They responded with some suggestions, but to no avail.  I don’t know if it was the complicated security authorizations that our credit union requires, too many Mint users logging on and backing up the servers, or just simple unreliability on the part of Mint, but nothing was working.

A side note

Yes, Mint is a free product, and so our expectations should be low, right?  We mean, if they’re going to offer the service and not charge for it, we shouldn’t complain… right?

I don’t know. There are tons of free services out there that really do work without a hitch, every single time.  Take Gmail for instance.  Free from the beginning, Google promised stable, ad-supported email that would be fun to use.  I think they’ve delivered on that promise.  So much so that my college (and employer) uses it for the entire campus (about 4,000 individuals).  Gmail has shown itself to be reliable.

And there are plenty of others that we use every day: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (faltered some in the beginning, but it’s been pretty good for a while), among others.  They don’t cost anything, and they just work.

The final word (for now)

We’re not abandoning Mint.  Many of the banks and companies we use seem to update with little hassle.  Our point is this: if you really can’t support our financial institution, please don’t advertise it as such.

Now we’re back to Quicken for Mac 2007.  The good news is that a software update has enabled quick downloads of our credit union transactions with no import process.  It feels like a fresh start to a dated process.  But we would like to go back to Mint, someday.

All Mint has to do… is work.

Here’s the thing: most of use the Internet a ton, and we’re constantly storing passwords and identity information in our browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, et al) for quick and convenient access when we return.  The problem is that the browser is not a secure silo for housing your login data.  If someone was to steal your computer (the most likely of all scenarios), they’d be able to access all of that information and do who knows what with it.

That’s where 1Password comes in.

It’s a piece of desktop software from a company called Agile Web Solutions.  1Password has set a standard for storing sensitive information on the Mac, including:

• usernames/passwords
• identities
• credit card information (for online shopping)

The great news is that 1Password isn’t just available on the Mac.  It can also be installed on the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and there’s even a Windows public beta available.  We rarely buy new software for our computer, but a program like 1Password is just too valuable not to have.

Beyond keeping your private data safe, another main benefit of using a program like 1Password is that it stores and remembers data so you don’t have to.  There have been so many times that we’ve had to go through the process of requesting a password reset, creating a new password, and then having to remember it for the future.  1Password remembers everything with one “master password” so you don’t have to.  The software includes built-in browser plugins (for every web browser you could think of) that let you call up usernames and passwords with a quick keystroke.

You can try 1Password and any of Agile Web Solutions’ products free for 30 days.  We’ve found it to be extremely useful, so give it a try!

Bonus: 1Password stores your data locally, but for those of you that are itching for an offsite backup, you can simply save your 1Password keychain in your Dropbox.  If something happens to your computer, you’ll be able to restore all of your important data.