Happy New Year, Link Love, and a mortgage update

Happy New Year!!!

Ringing in the New Year with a mortgage update but no words of wisdom other than what other people have brought over the past week.

Though I have been enjoying writing 1/1/11 on checks.  Woo.  November 11th is going to be awesome.

We got the maximum benefit to our monthly paychecks with the new tax cuts. We totally are not the people who need that extra $80+. (For some reason it’s working out to $200/month extra but I think some of that is just changes in our predicted income for withholding purposes.)

Last Month (December):

Balance: $136,704.56
Years left: 12.5
P = 618.71, I = 595.80, Escrow = 591.95

This month (January):

Balance: $132,837.63
Years left: 12
P = 673.28, I =541.12, Escrow = 591.95
One month savings (difference between predicted interest for next month vs. actual interest): $12.64 (this is on top of the savings from last month, I’m just looking at the marginal change for this month’s extra payment)

Hey! We’ve paid off 50% of the original cost to our house! (Of course, we’ve paid a lot more than 50% of the value because of interest, but what can you do?)

Burnout is real, people. We desperately need this time off right now!  A poignant post by Clio Bluestocking Tales.

Late with Christmas presents?  Here’s a fantastic gift to give the person who has everything and doesn’t need anything else.  Even though it’s out of stock on Amazon, I think you can easily make one yourself with more environmentally friendly packaging.

Isn’t it great to be done with grading?  Here’s a compilation of email excuses.  Guess which ones are real and which are fake.  We must have the same students as Female Science Professor because I swear I’ve gotten a couple of those identical emails.

Get Rich Slowly with a well-researched piece on true differences between men and women and spending/personal finance. This makes up for that dreadful reader story a few weeks back that linked women and shopaholics without a scrap of evidence other than the author had a shopping problem.

We have a version of this post on Understanding Tax Brackets by moneycrush languishing in our someday maybe we’ll finish it posts pile.  In the mean time, enjoy Jackie’s explanation!  It is probably more helpful anyway.  It doesn’t help that TurboTax only gives average tax rates, not marginal when it would be nice if it gave both.

Oh man, First Gen American NAILS it with this great post on the whiners who let life happen to them instead of taking the reins themselves.  Ironically I got into an argument with someone on GRS about this exact same topic that day.  I told her to read FGA.

Everyday Tips with a very thoughtful post on 10 things she’s learned this past year.

We were in this week’s carnival of personal finance.