And no, we don’t _currently_ have enough in the ING account to pay even the reduced mortgage payments out of interest…but that’s because we haven’t closed on the sale of my fiancee’s old house yet. But we do already have a buyer lined up and a price agreed upon, so all that remains is lawyer-dances and getting her furniture moved.

Once we have the cash, we’re going to refinance our current mortgage (using someplace like ditech, GMAC, or ING that’ll give us a way lower rate than we’re currently paying at the local bank-that-would-approve-us-in-time-for-our-own-closing-date…we’re paying 2.5% above what those other lenders are quoting). And unlike people who refinance in order to take equity _out_, we’ll be putting about $40,000 of equity _in_, which (in addition to the interest rate cut and the move from 15y adjustable to 30y fixed) will bring us to within $75/mo of what our ING interest on the remaining cash will be.

I wrote a cool little simultaneous-amortization script in perl, and ran the numbers on a bunch of different repayment scenarios…including using 100% of the house-sale money to refinance the current mortgage (it leaves us $30,000 short of complete repayment with no source of guaranteed income to cover the payments on what’s left). This plan turned out to be the most flexible and financially sound. $75/mo is a trivial contribution to have to make to cover the cost of housing…and if I ever find myself COMPLETELY without other income or resources, I’d have almost 20 years of contributing nothing at all before the principal in the ING account would be completely drained. I’ve endured long periods of unemployment before (18 months out of 3 years, at one point), but nothing short of the collapse of civilization would keep me down for so long that I couldn’t keep the house, one way or another, on this plan.

Yes. I’m extremely conservative about my payments for housing. Perhaps even neurotically so. But those 18-months-in-3-years of unemployment forced a lot of changes on me that I didn’t want, making my life an almost unendurable hell, and also keeping me from doing much to repair the credit damage I sustained from my foolish decision to go to college. Protecting my house (and by extension, my marriage-to-be) from a repeat of 2001-2004 is worth it.

Matt: That sounds like a great plan, care to share details? You don’t have enough stashed in ING to (nearly) pay your mortgage out of the interest, do you? Either way, you might be interested in checking out HSBC Direct. We have accounts at ‘the big 3′ (ING Direct, HSBC Direct, and Emigrant Direct) and have only been using HSBC recently. They’re paying a good bit more than ING in interest (currently 5.05%), and they have a pretty nice interface (as good as ING in my opinion, better than Emigrant). And they seem more reliable than Emigrant (e.g., the’ve never gone offline for a few days for an upgrade and then been unable to get their site back up like Emigrant did earlier in 2006).

2. Refinance our house, putting the money we’ll get from selling my fiancee’s old place in Michigan to work cutting the payments. (I have a plan in place which, once implemented, will cut the total mortgage payment in half, and pay all but $75/mo of that half out of the interest on our joint ING account.)

3. Put every cent of savings and increased income towards a cushion of savings and working capital, so that as of this time next year, I can quit W2 work forever and devote myself full-time to my own businesses.

I’ll feel comfortable taking that last step when I’ve got savings (outside the ING account that’ll be paying most of the mortgage payments) equal to a year’s household expenses. With the #1 household expense dropping from $1500/mo out of pocket today to $75/mo out of pocket going forward, that’s going to be way easier than it would have been before. If I switch day jobs soon enough, I should be able to manage it by the end of the year.

Complete next year’s budget; Analyze current year results

Adjust withholding for updated incomes

Investment & Net Worth Review

Check Credit Reports

Insurance Inventory-Video tape belongings

Add income-rental income, blogging, personal finance advice, taxes, sell crap, focus groups, surveys

Check into 403b & 529 plans

Make a photocopy of every card in wallet

Set budget so net worth goal can be at least a 20% increase over PY

Rebalance Portfolio

Tax Projection

Roth Contributions

Look into estate planning