Guys, thank you so much for your responses. To answer your comments:
I was planning on waiting until summer because it didn’t occur to me to refinance before the end of my 5-year ARM. Yes, I know that was just dumb of me. I didn’t realize that rates had already gone down and started to climb back up. I’ll pay more attention to Countrywide’s monthly “Refinance Now!” mailings.
I was considering taking money out of the house because, as Arty surmised, the house is worth a lot more than 200K. My friends say that I’m too young to have a house with 80% equity. They suggest I take money out of the house and invest it. But I don’t think there are any investments that will offset the interest on the mortgage or the sleepless nights I’d have worrying about loosing the roof over my head.
I do understand that paying off my house is a very conservative plan but it is very comfortable. As I stated initially, I can easily afford my current mortgage and still have money for savings and fun. I know I can save enough in the next few years to pay off the balance and have money for an emergency fund.
Raybyrnes, I’m not sold on the idea of taking out a home equity line of credit. That would mean that I still have my first mortgage but now tack on a second. If paying off the full first mortgage will put a squeeze on me, then how would I pay two mortgages?
Barnaby33, what do you mean by ‘the borrower to lose their non-recourse status’? What does that mean? Is there a drawback to paying off my mortgage? And HLS you remark about desperate times? How can the government increasing rates help those people who are in housing trouble? Perhaps I haven’t learned as much from you as I need to.
It seems that the best plan is to refinance for another 5 year ARM at the best rate I can get. Then I should focus my resources on saving as much money as I can to pay off the full balance in the next 5 years. Is there a downside to this plan other than being unnecessarily conservative?
Also, should I pay off the house in chunks over the 5 years or pay it all off at the end? Should I pay down some more of the balance when I refinance?
