Life with an adjustable rate mortgage can be very…uh…let’s say ‘entertaining’. I have been feeling the heat of my adjustable rate adjusting up every freakin’ 6 months for the past year and have occasionally gone out into cyberspace to research options.
Interestingly, I found this site, Fixed Rate Mortgages based in England. The first thing that jumped out at me is their description of a fixed rate mortgage. Sure sounds an awful lot like my ARM to me!
In exploring this site, which was actually quite an education for my provincial little self, I could not find anything close to a 30-year fixed mortgage. I found myself quite happy I’m not trying to buy a house in England.
So, I left that site feeling a little less persecuted by my ARM and a whole lot more educated. Yes, I pay an outrageous amount of mortgage interest each year, and if I were still an employee, that would totally be money out the window because I don’t have enough personal deductions to itemize. But since I’m self-employed, I am getting the benefit of deducting a good chunk of that mortgage interest through my home office deduction. The other thing I try to remember is that while my house payment is almost double what it was when I bought this house 11 years ago, the market value of my house has more than doubled and I have about 20% equity, even with that ridiculous mortgage. In the end, I guess I’m not getting screwed quite as badly as it feels like, sometimes.
