No, I’m not that horrible of a husband. My wife has been at work all day (since 2PM). We went out to brunch before she left for work. And we’re going out to dinner tomorrow.

And she has two bouquets of flowers in the house.

Please don’t think I’m a horrible person.

Within a month or so of obtaining the mortgage, I received something in the mail about biweekly payments. The letter claimed that I could make a payment every other week – automatically debited from my checking account for my convenience – instead of making one monthly payment.

The net result (and the reason I would want to do this) is that I could pay off the mortgage about five years early and save thousands in interest. I looked over the paperwork and was confused. Switching from one payment a month to two payments couldn’t conceivably whittle down the principal that fast, even if it would save me a few pennies on the interest accumulated over half a month.

I was going to call and inquire, but I forgot about it. Then, today, I was browsing the GMAC Mortgage website and I saw a similar advertisement. I checked out the online offer, and I found some fine print to clear up exactly how this program would magically pay my mortgage off sooner.

Biweekly Payments = More Payments

The trick is basically that you end up making an extra mortgage payment over the course of the year.

With the bi-weekly system, you pay half of your normal monthly mortgage payment every other week. That means you’re making half a payment 26 times throughout the year – the equivalent of 13 full payments. In other words, if my old mortgage payment was $1500/month I’m simply paying an extra $1500/year to pay down the principal.

From the GMAC fine print:

One-half of your monthly mortgage payment would be deducted every other week, on the same day of the week, for a total of 26 withdrawals per year. This results in one additional mortgage payment, applied directly to your principal each year, to accelerate the equity growth in your home.

Does this wonderful service come free of charge? Of course not.

I don’t know how much the original offer would have charged, but I did find the costs as advertised through GMAC Mortgage. The program involves a $295 “enrollment fee” and a $5.42 monthly fee (about $65/year).

While these aren’t exorbitant fees by any means, they are entirely unnecessary.

GMAC Mortgage – like virtually every mortgage company on the face of the earth – allows you to add any amount to your monthly payment. Any amount that you include over and above your normal payment (Principal + Interest + Escrow) is used to pay down the principal.

To achieve the same results as the “Biweekly Payments” plan, add a one-time payment equal to your monthly payment to your final mortgage payment for the year.  If you have a monthly payment of $1200, not counting any applicable escrow, add $1200 to your December mortgage payment. That amount is based on a $200,000 loan, 30 year term, and 6.00% interest rate.

By adding an annual payment of $1,200 as principal curtailment, you’ll cut short the life of your loan by five years. You can use a mortgage calculator, like this one from bankrate, to play around with the figures. Over the course of those 25 years, you’d be handing $295 + 300 * $5.42 (almost $2,000) to your mortgage company.

It seems silly to pay them for something you can do absolutely free.

Don’t want to make a big payment at the end of the year? Add 1/12th of your monthly payment to each payment. You can split it up how you like, but the bottom line is principal curtailment is the only way to pay off your mortgage early. You don’t need to sign up for a special program and pay any fees to pay down your principal as you go.

These bi-weekly plans (and everything like it) are just another way for the mortgage company to milk you for cash.

And it is just about as great as everyone says it is.

I borrowed a copy of the graphic novel from a friend, and I had trouble putting it down to go about my regular holiday duties. The first couple of issues are riveting – they just draw you in. Although I wasn’t quite as thrilled with all of the later issues individually, I was driven to keep reading to see how the story resolved itself.

Masked Adventurers, Not Superheroes

 One of the things I like about the Watchmen world is that (almost) all of the superheroes are just plain human.  They each have their gifts and talents, but with the exception of Dr. Manhattan no one has super-powers.

This is what always drew me to characters like Batman and the Punisher.  Other characters – X-Men, Superman, Spiderman – are cool.  No doubt.  But there’s something really intense and intriguing about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

There’s a Sense of Time

Another thing that sets Watchmen apart, in my eyes, is that there’s a sense of time and history.

A lot of major comic series have spanned decades. Yet the same characters continue, and time just passes incidentally. It seems like time is ignored, and there’s no effort to create a coherent, long-term “history” of what’s happening in the world of, say, the X-Men.

Watchmen doesn’t suffer this problem, in part, because it was written in twelve short issues.  There’s no need to incorporate hundreds of issues into one coherent story.  Yet the book does present a larger picture, a real history of the world.

The story spans two generations and some forty years, and you really get a sense of what changes over that time. People retire, people die. Society changes, and so does it’s view about superheroes.

Things are not static, and it isn’t taken for granted that the future will be anything like the present.

Was the Ending Too Abrupt?

This is my only concern with the story. It seems like it could have gone on for 16, 20, 24 issues without trouble.

The early issues pulled me in, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of story development. Things moved slowly.  Rorshach uncovered a few clues, and they slowly pieced together. The real interest came from learning more about the characters in this world.

In the last three or four episodes, though, the plot speeds to a conclusion. The ultimate plot is uncovered and resolved in the last two issues.

This part could have used some more development, in my opinion. This may have been necessitated by the choices that the characters made, though.

Had Dan and Jon acted differently in the end, there could have been a longer, more drawn out conclusion. However, as it was, the steam let out quick and there was no where else to go.

Will the Movie Be as Good?

Good question. The first trailer I saw looked cool. Mysterious, thrilling. The second one looked a little more cheasy.

Can’t say that I’m sure it’ll be a blockbuster, but I hope it is. With a couple months left until release (March 2009?), I can’t wait to go see it.

This is certainly a topic I plan on revisiting.  I’ll probably get my own copy of the graphic novel for Christmas, and after I read through it a second and/or third time I’ll have some more concrete thoughts to share.  First impression of the book, though, is awesome.

When I first got my license (2001), gas prices would fluctuate around $1.25 in my area of New Jersey. Slowly, they climbed until they eclipsed the $2.00 mark.

Over the last year or two of skyrocketing gas prices, they steadily rose into the $3.00′s, and for a brief period prices flirted with the $4.00 mark. I may have paid $4.00 once or twice, but they capped around $3.75 to $4.00 per gallon.

It seemed that prices would never drop – at least not back to what they had been. I thought the bubble would burst, and they’d slowly dip back to $2.75 or $3.00, but I thought the days of sub-$2.00 gas were gone forever.

But yesterday I stopped at the local Hess Station. $1.79! Woot! I filled my tank up (about 2/3′s empty, ~10 gallons) and it cost me less than $20. First time that’s happened in years.

What Happens to “Going Green”?

The New York Times columnist Allison Arieff pointed out that the recent price drops may not be the best thing for the environment.

With gas prices ballooning, people were essentially forced into adapting more economical ways of living. Conservation wasn’t a political statement, it was an economic necessity. What happens now to the vaunted wind farms, the hybrid cars, and people actually caring about the environment?

Well, hopefully the issue doesn’t get swept entirely under the rug.

But while some people may not care about the environment until it hurts their wallet, some of us are prevented from being more “green” because of the wallet. The downward spiraling economy doesn’t help that, either.

For example, I’m still driving my old Chevvy Cavalier that I got in college in ’03. It’s puttin’ away, and it gets a respectable 25 mpg or so. It’s no gas guzzler, but I wouldn’t mind investing in a hybrid that nets 30-40 mpg on my highway commute.

But I just can’t afford it at the moment. Between the cost of a mortgage, the payment on my wife’s car, and stagnating salaries (we’re in an as-yet unsuccessful contract-negotiation year at school), I don’t have the extra cash to throw at a hybrid.

I barely have enough cash to buy a new car without slowly sinking into debt.

But at least with gas prices coming down, I’ve got a bit more cash to spend. If they stay below $2.00 per gallon (unlikely?), I’ll save about $20 a week while school is in session – $6-700 per year.

Arieff may be right that sinking gas prices may make some people forget about the environment, but for some of us that extra cashflow may just open up the green necessary to invest in going green.