There is always a debate when home buyers have to decide on the merits of 15 or 30 year fixed mortgage rates. Many people wait until they are older before taking on the responsibility of a mortgage so an early payment of this large debt is an important issue to think about. In a situation as important as this time needs to be spent considering all the available options. Home buyers looking into this need to be assured their monthly payments will not increase.
It seems that some lenders are happy to offer deals that appear too good to be true and they usually are. The interest rate should remain the same for fixed rate mortgages until the loan is repaid. This is of great benefit for anyone that does not like surprises. Both my wife and I decided to research fixed rate mortgages when we started looking at homes for sale.
Having a realistic, sustainable monthly payment on our mortgage was important even though we wanted to pay off our debt as soon as possible. This meant we had to consider 30 year fixed rate mortgage plans as well as those of 15 years. The problem was that we weren’t very happy about having a mortgage close to when we both retired so it was our hope a 15 year fixed mortgage rate would still be available to us. We felt that there was a great deal of emphasis on paying the mortgage off early.
Taking everything into account we finally went for the easier 30 year mortgage plan instead. There were many things that lead us into making this choice. It was easier reaching this conclusion when I learnt my wife was expecting a baby. As she intended to raise our child at home we couldn’t rely on her financial income to the monthly expenditure. The problem we could see was the increased financial commitment on a monthly basis if we had opted for the 15 year fixed mortgage rate. We just decided we would probably get into trouble if we took this route. Despite the trepidation of having a longer term loan, it did reduce the repayments considerably.
If we have spare cash throughout the year then we can use it to reduce the capital sum. If you make a handful of extra payments throughout a twelve month period you can knock years off of your loan. It may be easier said than done, but this approach does pay off eventually. Although we would have much preferred a loan with a 15 year fixed mortgage rate we had to take our needs and abilities into consideration. Anyway, everything worked out fine despite our hesitancy.