Not hard to pay double...

I just wrote my first mortgage checks. Since the little mortgage has a higher interest rate (and has to paid off in a lump sum at the end of 15 years, which will probably be done by selling the place but would be unpleasant should we stay there that long), we've decided to pay it off on a fast-ish schedule.

Well, they wanted 190.99. It's a 6% loan. I scraped back into my memory of when I used to TA a class in all this stuff and found that, lo, all but $31 of this was going to interest. So, by adding a little over $30 to the bill, I paid double. Huh. That wasn't so painful, now was it.

Now to play with Excel (or look up the annuity formulas) and find out what constant rate of payment would actually pay the little guy off in 5 years or whatever we decide we want. Doing double by doing the math every time isn't gonna happen... I'm too lazy, plus it makes the payments go up later. No good. *yawn*