Were the ladies all okay?

They were in the car. The car was stuck on the ice. AND they refused my help! The had an octogenarian man drive the car through the parking lot for them because "he knows everything."

You think it was a generation/gender thing? Or was it my hat?

Pros, cons? (Note - I'm talking 1st and 15th, not every two weeks. I am nowhere near organized enough to stay on top of that since I don't get paid that way.)

Mine's taken out every two weeks, which is the way I get paid. Pluses, from what I understand is that the more frequently your payments are, the more of your money is actually going toward the principal and not interest. So it's more of a long term benefit, because it's miniscule amounts right now, but over the long run it will save you significant money.

The disadvantages are that you have to constantly manage your money so that the $$ for the mortgage payment is in the bank. It's not like the monthly hit of rent where you know one paycheck goes for rent and bills, etc., and the other is your living expenses. Mostly, for me, it's a little mentally tiring that there always seems to be this chuck of money coming out of my bank account.

My sister was trying to talk me into weekly payments, but I thought having money coming out of my bank account every damn week would be too stressful.

It's best if you're using it in a sauce or on something where it'll get melty.

Yeah, this is just plain old, extra old supermarket cheddar that I use in cooking, so it will eventually ended up in a melty state.

brenda, we looked at 2x a month a while back because we got it all mixed up in my head with every 2 weeks -- every 2 weeks ends up saving you asstons of money in the long run because you're essentially making two extra payments a year. 2x a month turned out on more careful calculations to make a difference of, like, 3 bucks. On the other hand, if it fits your pay schedule more comfortably and your bank allows it without any penalty, I can't think of anything against it. We ended up sticking with 1/month just because most of our income comes monthly, so without the big extra payoff time, it wasn't worth it.

Do be careful about the very first month's costs, if you do it -- our bank takes payments on the 2x/month plan before the "real" due date, which would've meant a full payment on the first of the month and the first half-payment two weeks later. It comes out to the same amount in the end, but that first month would've been eeen-teresting.

I would accept your assistance, particularly if you were wearing the sensibly fuzzy hat!

A bit of a wait to load, but awesome time lapse of a San Francisco day. [link]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Laura.

That time-lapse is beautiful!

Hey, lisah! When you come around, who is your dentist? (Maybe I'll get lucky and they are on my plan. I hate throwing darts at a wall to find a damned provider.)

Yeah, paying 2x a month doesn't save you much, but it can stabilize your cash on hand by synchronizing income and expenses a bit, which I like. I'm actually on the every two weeks payment plan because that is how DH gets paid, and it makes financial sense in a highly theoretical years down the road sense, but it's mostly comforting for me to not have to feel like a whole paycheck is immediately spent on the mortgage every month. My bank has the policy that the payments have to be a month ahead before they will start taking the automatic payments, which it took me a while to figure out - the wording on the web site is that payments have to be current, but they mean a month ahead - and that was a lot of money to pay out initially.

You think it was a generation/gender thing? Or was it my hat?

It is quite a hat, to be honest.

A bit of a wait to load, but awesome time lapse of a San Francisco day.

We're a magical city that floats in the clouds and then turns into constellations of light.

Man, I so wish I could IM while grading. This is BORING.

This is so true!