16 years ago I found myself at my kitchen table crunching numbers, planning my business, planning my mortgage, planning my financial future. I was a hotshot MBA, business owner, and had just purchased my first home. I had an office at the mouth of the canyon with a dozen agents working for me. I owned a couple of cars and a motorcycle. The year was 2007. Real estate was hot, but there were strange things on the horizon.
As I sat at the kitchen table, I was trying to analyze my 2 mortgages. As was the trend back then, you could get an 80% mortgage and then a separate 20% mortgage to get away from having to pay Private Mortgage Insurance.
On my excel spreadsheet, I created a column for payments and for interest and for principal and for payments. Then when I clicked some buttons, everything went to ZERO. I had unwittingly created an amortization calculator. It was pretty cool!
Then as I looked at my loan, I was amazed to see how much interest I was paying.
It was a lot. 95% of my payment was interest. It was stupid.
